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Brandon Adams hopes his spectacular knockout of Serhii Bohachuk leads to a high-profile fight in the junior middleweight division.
Adams understands, though, that upsetting a previously undefeated knockout artist might hurt his cause in the short term. Ukraine’s Bohachuk was 18-0 entering their 10-round fight Thursday night and he had won each of his professional bouts by knockout.
That didn’t deter Adams, who was down on all three scorecards when he clocked Bohachuk with a left hook in the eighth round that abruptly ended a fight NBC Sports Network televised as part of its “Ring City USA” series from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.
“I wanna fight against the best fighters,” Adams told BoxingScene.com. “I definitely wanna get in the ring to fight ‘em, but boxing is a business. If it can happen, I want it to happen. But I also know that fighters, especially with the performance that I put on, might not wanna fight me, you know, because they see how hard that I’m willing to fight and there’s not much give-up in me.
“So, you know, maybe not the fighters, but the managers and the promoters, they see that and they’re like, ‘That’s too big of a risk of a fight right now.’ But if not, you know, if somebody’s willing to fight me at the top, to give me an opportunity, I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m definitely gonna go in there with the intentions of completely winning.”
The 31-year-old Adams (23-3, 15 KOs), of Whittier, California, has knocked out Bohachuk and Sonny Duversonne (11-3-2, 8 KOs) in his two fights since dropping back down from the middleweight limit. Winning the fifth season of “The Contender” middleweight tournament enabled Adams to challenge WBC middleweight champ Jermall Charlo in June 2019 in Houston, Charlo’s hometown.
The 5-feet-9 Adams, who lost a 12-round unanimous decision to Charlo (31-0, 22 KOs), always knew he was better suited to thrive in the 154-pound division.
Adams ultimately wants a junior middleweight title shot. For now, he is trying to enjoy his huge victory over Bohachuk.
Adams trailed 69-63, 68-64 and 68-64 when his left hook knocked Bohuchuk to the canvas. A staggered Bohuchuk got up from Adams’ vicious punch, but he stumbled and referee Ramon Pena understandably stopped their fight at 2:47 of the eighth round.
“Winning this fight, I’m not sure exactly where that puts me,” Adams said. “But I rank it extremely high for myself, personally, because I knew what I was up against. But I didn’t know what I was up against exactly until I got in the ring and started fighting. You know, I knew I was up against ‘Ring City,’ fighting against Serhii. Like, they kept pushing for this fight to take place. They pushed for it harder than I think Serhii wanted the fight. And shoot, man, it was me against them.
“That’s what I said going into the fight, and I said it after the fight. I could just tell by the way certain things seemed to be playing out that this was their champion. They didn’t want him to lose, and you know, they was dressing it up for him to get this victory. And I destroyed their plans with a single punch.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.