Olekzandr “the Nail” Gvozdyk (14-0, 12 KOs) is one of the biggest up and coming Light Heavyweights, but it did not look like it for most of this fight.
He came in on the co-main event to the Terence Crawford versus Julius Indongo fight against Texan Craig “the Black Cat” Baker (17-2, 13 KOs).
Baker was no cherry picked opponent, as his only loss before tonight was to title contender Edwin Rodriguez, but Gvozdyk should have decimated him nonetheless.
Instead, what happened was a boring five rounds which featured nothing but Gvozdyk throwing jabs and some straights to the head. The sixth round seemed to go the same way until Baker got caught by a straight right hand and nearly went down.
After that shot, we saw why Gvozdyk is deserving of his reputation. He forced Baker into the corner and dropped him before the fight was called off by the referee mere seconds later.
Andre Ward put it well when he said that it was hard to truly see how good a fighter was until they were put up against other upper echelon boxers, so we must wait until Gvozdyk faces better competition to see if he really is worthy of all the hype.
Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank
