Wlodarczyk was waiting too long to let his shots off in each round, and this enabled the much busier Drozd to win rounds based on being busier.
In the past, Wlodarczyk was able to win many of his fights simply by overpowering his busier opponents, but that didn’t work tonight. Drozd was able to take the best shots from Wlodarczyk and keep coming forward to land his own punches. Wlodarczyk was knocked down in the 8th round. Drozd did a good job of shutting Wlodarczyk down in the last half of the fight when he was trying hard to score a knockout.
Wlodarczyk kept the pressure on Drozd, but his single shots weren’t able to bring him back into the fight. He needed to let his hands go by throwing multiple combinations to have had a chance to score a knockout, and that just wasn’t happening. Wlodarczyk’s stamina issues kept him from being able to throw enough punches to make himself competitive in the fight, especially down the stretch run when he needed to make up a lot of rounds.
The judges scored it 118-109, 119-108, 119-108.
WBA cruiserweight champion Denis Lebedev (26-2, 20 KOs) knocked challenger Pawel “Harnas” Kolodziej (33-1, 18 KOs) with a single shot in the 2nd round to win by a 2nd round knockout. Lebedev hit Kolodziej with a perfectly placed left hand to the head that put him down on the canvas. Kolodziej got back to his feet but the fight was stopped by the referee anyway after he got a look at Kolodziej’s condition.
Lebedev looked like lion in their in chasing down the timid looking Kolodziej. It wasn’t a competitive fight right from the start as Kolodziej looked out of his element.