Last night in Germany, unbeaten heavyweight contender Zhan Kossobutskiy of Kazakhstan scored an eye-catching second-round stoppage win over the tough and durable Joey Dawejko of Philadelphia. 32-year-old southpaw Kossobutskiy hit Dawejko with a body shot in round two, followed by a left hand that appeared to catch the half-turning-away Dawejeko on the side of the face. Dawejko went down heavily, flat on his face, half-out of the ropes.
Dawejko then claimed he was hit in the back of the head, with the third man then waving the fight off. Time was 2.03 of round two and Dawejko complained for some time that he was the victim of a foul, this to no avail. Kossobutskiy is now 16-0 with 15 KO’s. 31-year-old Dawejko falls to 21-9-4 with 12 KO’s, and he has been stopped just twice.
Looking at footage of the fight, it’s quite tough to see with perfect clarity what happens at the time Dawejko says he was fouled; this is due to the camera angle. The body shot from Kossobutskiy was definitely a hard shot, almost doubling Dawejko over as it did, but the following head shot may have caught Dawejko on the back of the head as he claims. But Dawejko was turning away at this point. Again, a tough one to call.
But Kossobutskiy moves on and he picked up his most notable win last night. “Tank” Dawejko is extremely tough and experienced and plenty of people felt last night’s fight would either go into the later rounds or more likely to the final bell. On paper at least, Kossobutskiy’s second-round stoppage win looks most impressive. It would be interesting to get Dawejko’s take on things now that he’s had a good amount of time to look back and reflect on what happened. It remains to be seen if Dawejko will lodge an official appeal.
Fans want to see more of Kossobutskiy and it will be interesting seeing who the 6’3” lefty, a pro since September of 2017, is matched with next.