The Vitali Klitschko vs. Odlanier Solis heavyweight championship fight was over nearly before it began. In fact, it ended within the first round, but it wasn’t a massive Klitschko bomb that closed the show, and it wasn’t a surprising home run from Solis either. Instead, the bout ended with strange circumstances and in very unusual fashion. Read on below for the full story on the Klitschko vs. Solis results.
The first round began and Solis was using a high guard and lots of movement. He was the one throwing and landing more shots, and seemed to have an effective style for ducking under Klitschko’s long jabs and popping up on the other side to throw a good right hand shot. It was particularly effective considering that Klitschko carries his hands so low.
However, at the end of the first round was an odd sequence of events. It appeared that Klitschko landed a well-placed, if not terribly hard, right hand shot on the left temple of Solis. Solis wasn’t shaken but apparently had a delayed reaction, stumbling slowly backward to the canvas. He barely made it back to his feet before the count of 10, but was unable to stand on steady legs or get his balance. The referee waved off the contest, and the official ruling was a TKO 1 win for Klitschko.
But there was certainly much more to the Klitschko vs. Solis results than that. Looking at the replay, the left leg of Solis begins to slip out on the canvas before Klitschko lands his right. The punch – which didn’t appear to really hurt Solis anyway – clearly didn’t have much, if anything, do with the knockdown. As soon as Solis got down to the canvas after his slow fall, he grasps at his right knee in pain.
So when he tried to get up and couldn’t balance himself, he wasn’t still hurt, but he actually just couldn’t put any weight on his leg. After trying to take a few steps and being unable to, the referee called it off. It goes down in the books as a stoppage victory in the first round, but it left more questions than anything else.
Unfortunately, the Klitschko vs. Solis results also come at a bad time. Many individuals, myself included, had been getting very enthusiastic about this contest, particularly as Solis weighed in at a career low weight. The fight was a complete dud, and regardless of who you were rooting for or what you wanted to see happen, nothing positive occurred. Klitschko didn’t get to assert himself, Solis didn’t put on a real challenge, and the heavyweight division continues to sputter along as a result.
Adding a bit more controversy and confusion to the way the bout ended is that Solis didn’t seem very shocked, or to be in very much pain, after the injury occurred and the fight was stopped. It raises the potential that there was a pre-fight injury that Solis and his camp were hiding, and perhaps hoping that it would be able to hold up. Or worse, it raises the potential of a potential shady element in the fight, and when something like this happens in the boxing ring, the word “fix” is always going to be floating out there, no matter how justified it is or not.
It’s similar in some way to the Cotto vs. Foreman bout from last June, although Foreman was able to make it deep into the bout, and he was wearing a knee brace instead of potentially hiding the injury. That bout had its own fair share of controversy, but the ultra-quick and anti-climactic ending here makes it all the worse.
Regardless, it’s a terribly disappointing result for the fighters, the division and the entire sport of boxing.
