Heavyweight Filip Hrgovic (19-1, 14 KOs) says he should have knocked out David Adeleye (14-2, 13 KOs) in the “crazy” eighth round after he had dropped him with a right hand in their fight on Saturday night at the ANB Arena in Riyadh.
Adeleye’s ‘Crazy’ Eighth Round
Hrgovic was hurt in the round and almost dropped by Adeleye after eating an eight-punch barrage of heavy punches. However, he was able to clinch to escape the round and go on to win a 10-round unanimous decision. The scores were 99-91, 99-90, and 99-90.
Filip, 33, admitted that he got “a little too relaxed” and was caught by a big punch from Adeleye. He assumed that the British fighter Adeleye was at his mercy, and didn’t recognize that he was still in his full faculties and dangerous.
After the eighth round, Hrgovic resumed dominating Adeleye and avoided his occasional wildly thrown homerun punches.
Adeleye took a lot of punishment in the fight, the type that few heavyweights in the division would have been able to withstand without getting knocked out. These weren’t arm punches from Hrgovic, as some fans mistakenly believed. You could hear the impact, and they appeared every bit as powerful as the ones that Moses Itauma landed on Dillian Whyte in the main event. Hrgovic was really sitting down on his shots, connecting cleanly all night, but Adeleye showed a tough beard.
“I knocked him down, and I should have finished him. I was a little too relaxed, and then he caught me with a few good shots and almost knocked me down. Yeah, I think it was a crazy round,” said Filip Hrgovic to Queensberry, talking about the eighth round of his fight tonight against David Adeleye. “I’m sorry I didn’t finish him.”
Adeleye played possum with Hrgovic, and pounced on him with a huge left hook in the eighth round when he thought he had him ready to be knocked out. The crowd got Adeleye’s competitive spirit awake with their cheering and responded by unleashing a storm of shots that somehow Hrgovic was able to take. The punches that he ate in that sequence were ferocious.
Hrgovic’s Callout for Moses Itauma
“Of course, he’s a young up and coming future superstar and I’m the toughest motherf**** in the division,” said Hrgovic when asked if he’d like to fight Moses Itauma. “That would be a great test for him to see if he’s the real deal. Is he a new Mike Tyson, or am I a new George Foreman? I would like to fight him, but it depends on Frank [Warren]. How much is he going to pay?”
Hrgovic would have been a much better step up tonight for Moses Itauma than Dillian Whyte. If Queensberry wants Itauma to be tested, they would be better off matching him against Hrgovic than throwing him in with undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk in his next fight.
