In the main event of the Top Rank Philadelphia show yesterday, Ukraine’s Oleksandr Gvozdyk (17-0-0) made his first WBC light-heavyweight defense defeating France’s Doudou Ngumbu (38-9-0) with a 5th round TKO.
The 31-year-old Gvozdyk won the WBC last December when he KO’d Adonis Stevenson in the 11th round. Last night fight was nowhere near to the one against Adonis and the Ukrainian was clearly the better man in the ring, even though he couldn’t produce KO.
Right from the get going Gvozdyk was the one controlling the tempo and the pace. “The Nail” was landing at will while the 37-year-old Frenchmen was doing some herky-jerky movements, trying to find some glitches in Gvzodyk’s game, but that didn’t happen.
In the 4th round the Ukrainian got through with a nice left hook followed by a massive right, but he couldn’t finish the job, because his adversary was non-stop moving. Then the 5th round came when Ngumbu suddenly came up with limp in his right calf. For whatever reason, referee Eric Dali gave him time to recover, ruling an accidental foul, even though there was no contact and the fight should have been stopped. Eventually, Dali stopped the fight at 58 seconds when it was clear Ngumbu could not walk off the injury.
Ngumbu eventually sat down in his corner and began to cry because of his disappointment with the outcome.
Source: ESPN
