By Miguel Velasco: In his first fight since losing his International Boxing Federation cruiserweight title to Steve Cunningham by majority decision on May 26th, Krzysztof Wlodarczyk (38-2, 28 KOs) made easy work of Dominique Alexander (16-4-1, 8 KOs), stopping him in the 1st round on Saturday night at the Expo Center, ul. Pradzynskiego, in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland..
After a mostly dull first opening to the first round, Wlodarczyk, 26, suddenly trapped Alexander against the ropes and landed a solid right hand to the head, dropping Alexander in a delayed reaction. The referee Daniel Van de Wiele quickly moved in and counted out Alexander at 2:13 of the first round, as Alexander was still badly hurt with huge amount of blood pouring from a gushing cut over his left eye. It appeared that his jaw may have been injured as well, because he kept opening and closing his mouth widely, looking to as if were checking if jaw was injured.
Up until the knockdown, Alexander had been controlling the round using movement and a sharp jab to keep the slower Wlodarczyk contained on the outside. It looked almost like a repeat of Wlodarczyk’s two fights with Cunningham, as he was throwing next to nothing and getting jabbed silly while plodding after Alexander. However, that all changed when Wlodarczyk was able trap Alexander along the ropes and land a couple of left-right combinations.
Alexander attempted to escape and slid along the ropes, but Wlodarczyk stayed directly in front of him. Suddenly, out of no where, Wlodarczyk threw a weak-looking right hand and moments later Alexander dropped to the canvas as if he were shot by a cannon. It looked stage, to be honest, because the punch was pretty average looking and didn’t appear to be thrown with knockout intentions by Wlodarczyk. However, when Alexander rolled over, his face was covered with blood and he looked genuinely hurt, especially after he got up and staggered around a little. I still wasn’t all that sold on Wlodarczyk, remembering how horrible he looked in his last two bouts with Cunningham. Whatever the case, he gets the vacant International Boxing Council cruiserweight trinket out of the bout.