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Former super middle world champ Mikkel Kessler made his long awaited comeback to the ring last night at Parken Arena in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Kessler faced former French champion Mehdi Bouadla for the vacant WBO European crown, ending a fourteen month hiatus after defeating Carl Froch for the WBC title.
The Frenchman was game from the start, aggressively coming forward and had success throughout the contest with a jab that Kessler could not seem to evade.
But Bouadla made the mistake of standing right in front of the bigger, stronger and more skilled ex-world champ, who started slow but gradually gained steam.
Kessler looked like a fighter who hadn’t fought in some time, his defense in particular wasn’t the best, but Bouadla gave the Dane enough opportunities that the rustiness didn’t much matter in the end.
By the third round Kessler was starting to zero in on his quarry and Bouadla was down from a right to the temple. The visitor managed to beat the count, losing a point in the process for spitting out his mouthpiece, and showed a great deal of heart in surviving Kessler’s onslaught for the remainder of the frame.
Bouadla was back to pressing Kessler in the fourth but was picking up more and more punishment along the way, a hefty price to pay for the jabs and occasional lefts and rights he managed to score.
Kessler was really starting to hurt his rival with body shots, including a spearing right that put Bouadla down again but the tourist would not stay down.
By the sixth, Bouadla was still winging punches but was also clearly unraveling as Kessler stepped up his attacks both upstairs and down, dropping the former French champ twice and causing the bout to waved off at the 2:25 mark.
Kessler improves to 44-2 (33) while Bouadla drops to 22-4 (10). While Kessler did look impressive offensively, he’ll need to improve his defense before facing someone with more punching power than Bouadla.
The undercard saw Danish light welter prospect Kim Poulsen, 18-1 (5), produce his second KO in a row by finishing off overmatched 39 year old Tarik Sahibeddine, 12-9 (2), in the third.
