Boxing In Europe: Saturday Night’s Alright For Fightin’

Big time Continental action this weekend and we start off with bouts that carried world title implications!

On a big card at Sala Polivalenta, in Bucharest, Romania, Montreal based Romanian Adrian Diaconu, 25-0 (15), had his hands full with previously undefeated American slugger Chris Henry, 21-1 (17), but won the Interim WBC Light Heavyweight title after 12 difficult rounds.

Despite his short, 5 foot 9 inch stature, “The Shark” Diaconu displayed the arguably sharper boxing skills but the 6 foot tall Houston native Henry just kept coming forward, throwing heavy punches.

Employing punishing counter combinations, Diaconu built an early lead but Henry began to connect with a useful uppercut and soon the adopted Montreal man was running out of gas, repeatedly grabbing the legs of Henry in a crouch to gain both a breather and a respite from his rival’s constant punches.

Diaconu rallied in the eighth and ninth frames but Henry regained his wind in the tenth and the two fought the last three frames in competitive fashion.

By the time the bout was over, Diaconu was declared the winner by scores of 116-112 and 115-113, twice.

Also on the bill, ex-WBA Lightweight Champ Raul Balbi, 55-9-1 (38), was again KO’d at light welter as another Montreal based Romanian expat, the towering southpaw Ionut “Jo Jo Dan” Dan Ion, 21-0 (12), rubbed out the 34 year old Buenos Aires veteran at 1:45 of the third round.

Evergreen ex-WBA Light Heavy Champ Silvio Branco, 57-9-2 (34), showed that he could still operate at 41 years of age as the Italian outpointed 30 year old Frenchman Abdelkader Benzinia, 10-9 (4), over six.

The other big fight taking place on Saturday was an IBF Cruiserweight title eliminator between two ex-world champs, former unified world cruiserweight champ O’Neill Bell, 26-3-1 (24), and former WBC Light Heavy titlist Tomasz Adamek, 34-1 (23), who clashed at Spodek in the Polish city of Katowice.

Bell came into the bout as the favorite despite fighting in the home country of Adamek but the American proved unable to deal with the speed advantage held by the Polish man and shockingly was on the deck in the first round.

But an even bigger surprise came when Bell was comprehensively outboxed during the bout and then chose to stay on his stool rather than to face Adamek for the eighth frame.

Afterward, Bell claimed illness but the warning signs of the durable Atlanta man’s decline were in evidence as much as two years before when “Give ‘Em Hell” was fortunate to get the win over Dale Brown after being outboxed by the Canadian, followed by a struggle against South African Sebastiaan Rothmann in which Bell’s power bailed him out in the eleventh before splitting a brutal two bout series with French strongman Jean Marc Mormeck.

Also on the card, light middle Damian Jonak and cruiserweight Tomasz Hutkowski both won WBC Youth belts and Andrzej Wawrzyk won the Polish Heavyweight title.

At the National Stadium in Dublin, Ireland, the Hyland brothers were all victorious with Patrick, 11-0 (5), winning the vacant Irish Featherweight trophy with a third round stoppage of Paul Griffin, 24-4 (8), while Eddie, 9-1 (3), outpointed Kevin O’Hara, 13-4 (3), over ten to walk off with the vacant Irish Feather title and super bantam Paul, 10-0 (4), saw off Ayittey Mettle, 2-9 (1), after eight rounds.

The Sports Palace in Kiev saw one of the top domestic fighters in The Ukraine almost lose his undefeated record as WBA Interim Welterweight Champion Yuriy Nuzhnenko, 27-0-1 (13), managed a ten round technical draw when he couldn’t continue against Puerto Rico’s Irving Garcia, 16-3-2 (8), due to a badly cut and swollen eye that had been injured earlier in the bout.

29 year old Garcia proved he was a cut above the mostly European fare that Nuzhnenko had been defeating by repeatedly nailing the oncoming local man with sharp counter shots and will undoubtably be asking for a rematch.