Adames put together a solid performance but the moment of the stoppage was questionable.
There was no doubt that Carlos Adames had Julian Williams hurt in the ninth round.
However, the referee stopping the bout — in what was a highly-competitive fight — that same round was nothing short of controversial. Adames retained his WBC interim middleweight championship with that ninth-round TKO at the Armory in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Saturday night.
Though Williams started that ninth round by boxing brilliantly, a right hand from Adames stunned “J Rock” and the Dominican fighter proceeded to keep battering the challenger. As Adames was unleashing power shots, Williams did work his way off the ropes and even landed a stiff punch of his own ironically right as the ref stepped in and ended the fight controversially.
After getting his hand raised in victory, Adames agreed with the ref’s stoppage, telling Showtime’s Jim Gray that he was going to hurt the challenger had the bout kept going.
But “J Rock” didn’t see it that way at all.
“I think it was a terrible stoppage but what could I do?” Williams told Gray in response to the deflating ruling. “That’s BS.”
His trainer, Stephen Edwards called it “a typical A-side stoppage.”
Although the exact moment of the stoppage was peculiar, considering Williams landed the last punch, Adames unloaded on the challenger with an absolute offensive onslaught in the fourth round and kept consistently teeing off to the body as the bout went on. DAZN had Adames up 77-75 at the time of the stoppage.
Here’s how the entire Adames vs. Williams main card went.
