The end came, as ends often come, with reassuring familiarity. The favorite won in dramatic fashion. The loser lay sprawled face down on the canvas?
Friday night at the Centre Videotron in Quebec City, Montreal, Canada, in a fight televised live by PBC on Spike, WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis ?Superman? Stevenson (28-1, 23 KOs), from Blainville, Quebec, Canada, by way of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, successfully defended his title by knocking out Thomas ?Top Dog? Williams Jr. (20-2, 14 KOs), the underdog from Ft. Washington, Maryland, at 2:54 of round four.
Both men are southpaws which made for fine viewing. Wearing Kronk gold, Adonis Stevenson?Emanuel Steward called him the strongest man he ever trained?brought the fight to Williams at the opening bell.
Thomas Williams Jr., in purple and white trunks, had a serious rep coming into the fight. The odds were stacked against him and he was in there with a monster, but he redeemed himself and then some.
The end came, as ends often come, with reassuring familiarity. The favorite won in dramatic fashion. The loser lay sprawled face down on the canvas.
The challenger had a shaky first round. Stevenson dropped him with a left to the side of the head. Williams wasn?t hurt. He made it to his feet and through the round.
Williams pulled himself together in the second. He started catching the champ with sneaky uppercuts. They traded. They went toe-to-toe. Stevenson was teeing off, when he wasn?t getting hit in the face, and it felt like Williams had turned the tide. But Stevenson is unrelenting. He eats shots, at an alarming rate, but looked unstoppable Friday night against a very tough opponent.
Stevenson won round two by a hair. Williams was wild but came to fight.
The challenger landed two lefts to Stevenson?s face to start round three. The fighters traded uppercuts. They went to the body. Williams put some hurt on the champion and vice-versa. He not only won the round. He revived questions about Stevenson?s defense and ring IQ. But if one fighter was in effect born to knock the other fighter out, defense and ring IQ just don?t cut it.
Stevenson had a fight on his hands and he knew it. He let round three get away from him. He needed to buy time. Ten seconds into the fourth, Stevenson resourcefully landed a low blow. When Williams recovered?Stevenson was on him like he was prey. Lefts, rights, uppercuts, body shots, it was a veritable smorgasbord of punishing punches. Williams still occasionally nailed the champ, with diminishing returns and dwindling hopes, but he was a man in a lifejacket in the middle of a raging sea.
The end may have been a foregone conclusion, but the end justified the means. The fight was not boring. The fight was not one-sided. The fight was not routine. The hometown fighter won by knockout and the loser went out on his shield. Everyone went home happy.
Stevenson was exuberant after the fight.
?It was a firefight,? he said. ?He put pressure on me so I decided to put pressure on him too. It was a fight with two guys who could punch and it was spectacular.?
Stevenson got that right. It was spectacular. But it won?t be as spectacular as the fight between Stevenson and Kovalev.
Sergey Kovalev isn?t going way. Stevenson isn?t ducking Kovalev. He ducks no man and fears even fewer. If and when they fight, and the sooner the better, they will be tested. Comparable knockout power but stylistically distinct, Stevenson is unbridled id, a force of nature, a machine bent on destruction. Kovalev is a thinking fighter. He considers what he is doing. But if Adonis Stevenson?s going down, and there?s no guarantee that Adonis Stevenson is going down, you can bet that it won?t be without a fight.
