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Lukasz Rozanski became the second WBC bridgerweight champion in history after a two-minute demolition job on Alen Babic.
Rozanski had not boxed for nearly two years but set about Babic from the opening bell and dropped him within 90 seconds after hurting ‘The Savage’ with a left hook and putting him over with a numbing right hand.
The Croatian beat the count easily but was swiftly overwhelmed by the 37-year-old and was against the ropes shipping heavy punishment when the referee stepped in to end the contest after 2:10 of the first.
The crowd inside the G2A Arena in Rozanski’s home town of Rzeszow, Poland went wild to salute their new world champion, who moves to 15-0 with 14 inside the distance. He has secured all of those victories – and now a world title – in a total of just 26 rounds.
Oscar Rivas had won the inaugural title in October 2021 but vacated the belt without ever defending it after deciding to take a break from boxing following an eye injury.
That meant Babic and Lukasz Rozanski got the chance to slug it out for the hardware in a match-up which seemed to promise an all-out war. A distance fight was not expected by anybody.
The duo arrived with a combined record of 25-0 with 23 of those wins coming inside the distance. But Rozanski’s last outing was a one-round blow-out of Artur Szpilka nearly two years ago while Babic has boxed five times since then.
And both of them were forced to wait just a little while longer as an issue with the gloves behind the scenes caused a delay of around 50 minutes to the main event here. Rozanski, however, quickly made up for lost time.
This was Babic’s first fight alongside new trainer Anthony Wilson but he did not get the opportunity to show anything they have been working on as Rozanski went straight to work.
Babic is usually the man applying the early pressure but he was on the back foot from the off and just could not get a foothold in the fight.
There was 1:30 on the clock when he went down for the first time and although he got up in time, shaking his head, the fight was over just 40 seconds later with Rozanski unloading with both hands.
