Sebastian Fundora needed almost every second of 12 rounds to stop Ermal Hadribeaj, finishing his stubborn challenger with a left hand after spending much of the fight battling him at close range.
The stoppage came at 2:59 of the final round at The Chelsea at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Fundora (25-1-1, 17 KOs) retained his WBC junior middleweight title for the fourth time, while Hadribeaj (23-1-1, 8 KOs) suffered his first professional defeat.
This was hard work for a champion who entered as a heavy favorite. Hadribeaj got underneath Fundora’s long arms, crowded him, and landed hard punches, making the early rounds competitive. Fundora followed him too often without creating the space needed to make his reach effective.
A long left briefly buzzed Hadribeaj in the second, but it didn’t persuade him to stay outside. He recovered and went straight back to forcing the fight inside.
Holding became a recurring feature. Referee Thomas Taylor deducted a point from Hadribeaj in the third round, then took another in the 11th as the challenger increasingly tried to prevent Fundora from working.
Between those penalties, Hadribeaj gave the champion plenty to handle. His harder individual shots competed with Fundora’s greater activity, and he continued coming forward even as the body punches accumulated.
Fundora eventually made that close-range fight work for him. Short punches and uppercuts gave him scoring opportunities, while his sustained attack downstairs made Hadribeaj pay for staying within reach.
The later rounds belonged more clearly to the champion. Hadribeaj could still land, but he was being outworked, and his attempts to crowd Fundora increasingly ended in holding rather than effective offense.
Fundora kept punching through the final round before landing the left hand that dropped and stopped Hadribeaj just before the bell. The finish rewarded his persistence, although the difficult early rounds showed how little he had done to keep the challenger at a distance.