[FONT="]Steve Cunningham: “My game plan tonight was to box. I thought I had him in the fourth, so I went for a knockout and he caught me. It cost me the fight. That’s boxing. [/FONT]http://fightbeat.com/news_details.php?NW=22004
This is a good win for Adamek, and great for Boxing. Adamek is a skilled puncher with a decent chin, plus he is exciting where Cunningham is at best boring. If you didn't get to see the fight, tune in, definitely worth it. You will stand there scratching your head how the judge saw it 114-112 for Cunningham:nono:
Every other fight I've seen Cunningham in has been boring as hell. My guess is his promoter/manager told him if he's ever going to make money, he's going to need to stop dry-humping his opponents. I watched him fight Kelvin Davis live and I thought he barely beat him. Based on that, I was never very impressed with him. And I fully expected Adamek to win that fight. I was actually surprised that Cuinningham made it as close as he did. His flurries succeeded in making Adamek think twice, and shut down his offense from time to time. The problem I see is that if Cunningham tries to box more (i.e. fight off the back book and circle the ring) I think he'll be playing right into Adamek's hands and he'll most certainly be knocked out. I'm afraid last night's performance was the best Cunningham could've done and it wasn't good enough. I can't see him ever beating Adamek. Unfortunately, Hopkins, with his spastic and illegal style, I could envision beating Adamek much the way he did Pavlik. He'll manage to back up Adamek and disarm him a great extent the way he did Pavlik. The difference is, the 4 or 5 right hands that Pavlik managed to land in their fight, if they're landed by Adamek, could spell canvas for Hopkins, who for all of his chaos and holding and hitting isn't always on steady feet and can be timed by a fighter with a quick trigger. But you have to give Hopkins a lot of credit even if he loses. He's not Joe Sloppy out there fighting guys way past their prime. He's fighting young lions and guys coming off wins. I could see why he'd skip on Dawson though. I think he'd lose to Dawson in similar fashion as he did Taylor. Hopkins, plain and simple, doesn't deal well with hand-speed - it intimidates him, depletes his punch output and in general turns him into a pussy fighter. Even to this day. And that's the only reason ODH had any success against Hopkins. Had ODH been even close to as big as Hopkins, I would've given him a good chance to beat Hopkins.
Sorry, Double L, I'm going to have to correct you. You scored the Cunningham-Davis fight for Davis. Nobody at ringside had it close, let alone Davis winning. :atu: Otherwise, besides the first fight against Woladarczyk, Cunningham was never much of a holder. I agree with your comment about Cunningham backing away. The difference is that Cunningham doesn't really move straight backwards (Actually, he gets tagged alot when he goes straight back). I agree with you in that he's gotta stink it out a bit to beat Adamek, but it would be with holding (Which I think he has to do in order to get out of a bad situation with Adamek) and lateral movement, which he is very good at.
ok. so i thought Davis did beat him. and i can see why. Davis would move in for the attack, and Cunningham would hold him. Stop. Start again. It was horrible to watch. You were there. You said you were impressed with him. I couldn't understand how in the hell you were. All he did was wrestle his shorter opponent and get hit with occasional over-hand rights.
So basically you feel that he needs to tackle and wrestle Adamek the way Hopkins would in order to win? I agree? Adamek is too accurate and too hard of a puncher to box for 12 rounds and not expect to get hurt. And Cunningham doesn't have the speed or the sting that Dawson did. So there's no way he can replicate Dawson's success.
Cunningham didn't hold nearly as much against Davis. As a matter of fact, there wasn't all that much holding at all. The more boring the fight, the better it is for Cunningham. So in order for him to win, he's gotta CONSTANTLY pop his jab. If caught on the inside, he's gotta hold or actually use lateral movement because punching his way out of it was obviously a terrible decision.
Would be nice if he had some kind of defense rather than just getting punched in the face. Fun fighter to watch but horrendous defense.
That´s called polish defense. Adamek uses it, Dariusz used it, Golota used it. Of course it works better with a chin and balls.
:atu: Good point. Darius and Adamek got pretty far for just having a chin as there defense. Golota lost time after time, opportunity after opportunity.....
