by Fox Doucette
Top 10 super middleweight Adonis Stevenson (18-1, 15 KOs) looks to beat the ever-loving snot out of fringe prospect from Chicago Don George (23-2, 20 KOs) at Stevenson’s home venue of the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec on Friday night, October 12.
Stevenson was last seen in the ring pounding Noe Gonzalez into a pulp for two rounds en route to an easy KO victory; before that, he uncorked the Knockout of the Year for your columnist’s money when he caught Jesus Gonzales flush and flattened him in only 99 seconds. Stevenson has that habit of taking fighters a level or two below his own and making them look like the third-grade bully who terrorizes the kindergarten kids but gets his collected lunch money passed up the chain when the sixth-grade bully comes calling.
Don George, for his part, is perhaps best known for getting his brains bashed in for seven rounds before Francisco Sierra closed the show with a cheap shot after the bell of Round 7 on Friday Night Fights in July of 2010. George looked like it was purely a question of when rather than if the end would come; had Sierra not forced a technical decision with the foul (he was comfortably ahead on the cards and easily absorbed the two-point penalty imposed by referee Gary Ritter), he would surely have finished George in the eighth.
George was most recently back on ESPN2 in August; this fight with Stevenson was supposed to be the violent coda to the 2012 FNF season. Instead, George ducked a bullet and got paper-chinned former somebody Dionisio Miranda and handed Miranda what would be his fifth knockout loss in his last seven fights.
The narrative is set as surely as a work in pro wrestling; George is the jobber, Stevenson the guy who is going to get pushed for a shot at the winner of the Lucian Bute-Carl Froch rematch (like most Groupe Yvon Michel guys, Stevenson’s professional credibility is bolstered by the cuddly relationship between GYM and the IBF.) If Bute wins his fight, expect it to be a Canadian superfight that will capture Montreal’s sporting imagination.
This fight, and the David Lemieux-Alvaro Gaona co-feature, will air in the US on WealthTV.com (30-day free trial available) and in Canada on Indigo at 7:00 PM Eastern time Friday, October 12.
Fox Doucette covers Friday Night Fights for The Boxing Tribune. His weekly column, The Southpaw, appears Thursdays. Fan mail, hate mail, and Montreal steak can be sent to beatcap@gmail.com.
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