Usyk Ko’s Rodriguez In Kiev

By Dmytro Mossienko at ringside: Klitschko brothers promotional powerhouse K2 held another exciting fight night at the sold out Kiev Sports palace in Kiev, Ukraine on Saturday.

In the main event, Ukraine’s cruiserweight prospect, 28 years old London Olympic champion Alex Usyk (9-9-9KO) defended his WBO Inter-continental belt against hard hitting Miami based Cuban Pedro Rodriguez (24-22-20KO).

Prior to the fight Rodriguez’ only loss came via KO at hands of the hard hitting Russian southpaw Magomed Abdusalamov in 2012, and this added credibility to Pedro’s status of a viable opponent for Usyk in the championship fight.

The hard hitting Rodriguez stepped into the ring in Kiev obviously in much better shape than against ill-fated Abdusalamov, whose ultimate boxing loss happened in 2013 against another Cuban - Mike Perez. Rodriguez made no secret that he was looking for an upset. He easily avoided Usyk’s shots from the long distance in round one, and even tried to intimidate the champion with mocking him.

However, starting from rounds three-four Usyk added steam to all, what was going on in the ring, sending three-four punches combos and changing angles, with excellent footwork. In rounds 5-6 it’s started to become clear that Rodriquez victory plans based on counter-punching tricks were short lived. Even though he caught Usyk with several decent shots, both from left and right hands, Usyk clearly never was shocked and executed his game plan perfectly, under the guidance of his smart coach James Ali Bashir in the corner.

By the end of round six Rodriguez ate so much leather, that he had difficulty surviving the end of the round, when he was dropped by one of Usyk’s punch flurries. In the middle of round 7 Usyk flattened Rodriguez again and Russian judge Yury Koptsev had to stop the action!

It was another interesting fight to see how James Ali Bashir grooms new boxing super-star for the K2, with one after another shorter, but increasingly tough opponents arriving to the ring in Kiev from Russia, South Africa, Cuba, and his tactical and strategic skills developing in sweaty and stormy atmosphere of the fights, always competitive enough for the early stages of his career. We have to pay respect to Usyk, with all the homage the homemade hero gets in Kiev with herds of fans flocking him everywhere, he remains an earthy guy, never snubbing requests of photographing with him or signing a souvenir poster, soft spoken and truly good family man and father.

In the undercard Kiev based southpaw featherweight Oleg “Malina” Malinovsky won interesting tactical fight against Brasil champion Aldimar Silva Santos. Despite flying across half of the world from the south-American summer into Ukrainian winter, Silva arrived in great condition and fought gamely, but Malina was all-business with his southpaw tricks, leading right jabs, and perfectly controlled the 10 rounds fight to unanimous decision victory.

Some of the well known names, like former middleweight EBU and WBA continental champion Max Tiger Bursak, showed their class in the under-card. Bursak stopped game Georgian Giorgi Beroshvili in round 2 of their eight rounder. Another Ukrainian London Olympian Denis Berinchik won UD in interesting six round clash against stubborn Hungarian journeyman Gyorgy Mizsei Jr.

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December 12 , 2015