Stadion Wroclaw will host this weekend’s heavyweight clash between unified champion Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois. The 45,105 seater seat stadium in Poland is the largest venue in the Polish Ekstraklasa (Polish Premier football league).
However, despite primarily being a place for football to be viewed, the state of the art lantern looking stadium had its grand opening with a boxing match. ‘Dr. Ironfist’ Vitali Klitschko came to the historical city to defend his WBC heavyweight title against the nation’s hero, Tomasz Adamek.
Adamek came into the bout with a record of 44-1, the Polish superstar had claimed world titles at light heavy and cruiserweight. He was now six fights deep into the heavyweight section of his career, picking up a knockout victory over countryman Andre Golota on his heavyweight debut. Klitschko was on a ten fight winning streak since losing to Lennox Lewis in Los Angeles. Eight knockouts in those ten wins had Dr. Ironfist as the clear favourite.
The lopsided affair saw Klitschko command his Polish counterpart at the open air stadium on a summer’s night in the south of the country. Jim Lampley called the fight a ‘white wash’ as Adamek struggled all evening. Buzzed in the 1st round from a right hand Adamek’s night would only go downhill. Adamek was down in the 6th, and would continue to take a severe beating for another four rounds. The referee stopped the assault in the 10th, with Klitschko peppering the swollen face of his opponent, Adamek had some dignity in leaving the fight on his own feet.
ProBox TV spoke to promoter Tom Loeffler who was at the helm of the show in Wroclaw.
“We started K2 Promotions with Wladimir and Vitali in 2003.” Loeffler said in an exclusive interview. “We did our first fight in 2004 after Vitali lost to Lennox Lewis. He went on to beat Corrie Sanders. They went onto create K2 Ukraine, Alexander Krassyuk did and now runs that. I’m very close Alexander still, he has my full support. I was able to help get Usyk on HBO twice due the success we had with the Klitschko’s and Gennadiy Golovkin. That helped launch that World Boxing Super Series run where he became undisputed at cruiserweight. I’m not directly involved anymore, but I’m always here if they need me. Alexander has done a fantastic job creating the road for Usyk to become undisputed. After doing that and moving up to heavyweight to twice defeat Anthony Joshua, I put him at the top of my pound-4-pound list.
“So he has the fight coming up in Poland, we did Vitali vs Tomasz Adamek at the same venue. I like the idea, they did a deal with the Saudi company too. Alexander is very clever and knows what he is doing. Obviously we all know how horrible things are in Ukraine right now with the war. Vitali is still the Mayor of Kiev, I talk to both brothers on a regular basis. Naturally there is no way they can fight in Ukraine. We actually opened the stadium with Vitali’s fight. I remember getting a bit nervous when we got there a week before the fight and there was construction still going on. We got there to do a site survey and they were still laying bricks and making concrete. They were putting the final touches on this brand new stadium. I did mention it at the time, the guy working told me everything would be fine. Sure enough, It was a great evening, it was a sold-out out soccer stadium in Poland.”
