Montreal, Quebec (SportsNetwork.com) – WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson did both the expected and the unexpected en route to retaining his title with a unanimous 12-round decision over challenger Andrzej Fonfara before an enthusiastic 7,500 fans at the Bell Centre.<\/p>\n
Stevenson dropped his foe with a straight left hand to the head in the first round and again with a left to the body in the fifth, but had to rise from the canvas himself in the ninth after Fonfara — 10 years younger at age 26 — landed a short left hook and a long right hand.<\/p>\n
He rallied well after the surprise, however, and resumed stalking Fonfara in rounds 10 and 11 before engaging in a memorable final three minutes in which both fighters landed telling blows.<\/p>\n
Stevenson won two scorecards with counts of 115-110 and the third by 116-109.<\/p>\n
“I fight tough guys and accept all challenges,” he said. “I went down, but I still came back strong because I’m a true champion. Who gets knocked down? All the best ones, Ali, Roy Jones, all the best guys. I told everybody that (Fonfara) was strong and he was ready. He came to be a world champion.”<\/p>\n
The decision ended a streak of 13 straight wins by stoppage for Stevenson, who’s now 24-1.<\/p>\n
Fonfara, who’d briefly held the IBO’s title at 175 pounds in 2013, is 25-3 after losing for the first time in six years.<\/p>\n
“Tonight, Stevenson was better, but I’m still a young guy and one day I’ll be a world champion,” he said. “In the ninth round I got him, but he survived. He did everything a true champion needed to do.”<\/p>\n
Montreal fan favorite David Lemieux won his seventh straight fight since a two-bout skid three years ago, hammering Fernando Guerrero into a third-round knockout defeat in a scheduled 12-rounder for the vacant North American Boxing Federation middleweight championship.<\/p>\n
Lemieux boosted his record to 32-2 and scored his 30th KO, ultimately finishing the fight with a left hook and a crunching right uppercut that dropped Guerrero for a 10-count by referee Michael Griffin at 1:56 of round three.<\/p>\n
“Once I started to land my shots I could see it in his eyes that the game started to change,” Lemieux said. “I’d love to fight anybody in the world at 160 (pounds). I have no problem fighting anybody. I am determined to be a world champion. I’ve worked very hard for this.”<\/p>\n
Lemieux landed 49 power punches to 19 for Guerrero, who sustained a jagged cut over his right eye and saw his career mark slide to 26-3, including three losses in eight fights after a 21-0 start.<\/p>\n
Houston-based 154-pounder Jermell Charlo won his 24th straight fight as a pro with a wide unanimous decision over Charlie Ota in a 12-round bout. Charlo is a top-10 contender in rankings supplied by the IBF, IBO and WBO and is slotted at No. 14 by the Independent World Boxing Rankings.<\/p>\n
He won the decision over Ota by scores of 115-111, 118-109 and 118-109.<\/p>\n
Ota fell to 24-2-1 as a pro.<\/p>\n
Other winners on the undercard included Yves Ulysse Jr., who stopped Carlos Olivera in one round at junior welterweight; Julian Williams, who improved to 16-0 with an eighth-round stoppage of Michael Medina at junior middleweight; and Colombian-born Eleider Alvarez, who’s now 15-0 after a unanimous 10-round decision over Alexander Johnson at light heavyweight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Montreal, Quebec (SportsNetwork.com) – WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson did both the expected and the unexpected en route to retaining his title with a unanimous 12-round decision over challenger Andrzej Fonfara before an enthusiastic 7,500 fans at the Bell Centre. Stevenson dropped his foe with a straight left hand to the head in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[247],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boxing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}