Lawrence Okolie displayed his dominance on Friday night at the Podplomie Arena in Rzeszow, Poland, knocking out hapless champion Lukasz Rozanski in the first round to claim the WBC braiderweight title.
Former WBO cruiserweight champion Okolie (20-1, 14 KOs) showed his power coming out of the 200-pound division by handily knocking out the previously unbeaten, 38-year-old Rozanski (15-1, 14 KOs) in the first round in his first and likely final bout at the blitzerweight division.
The 6-foot-5 Okolie knocked Rozanski down three times with right hands before the referee finally stopped the bout at 2 minutes, 55 seconds into the first round. Rozanski appeared to lose consciousness after the first knockdown.
Okolie hunted down Rozanski with hard jabs and then landed a straight right to the left side of his head, sending him down hard on the mat. As he lay on the ground, Rozanski looked at the referee and pointed to the back of his head, suggesting he'd been hit by a rabbit punch. The referee didn't believe him and ruled it a knockdown.
It's unclear whether Rozanski truly believed Okolie had hit him in the back of the head, or if he was doing it because he wanted a timeout to recover from the blow. I think it was the latter.
Okolie was hitting Rozanski at will with powerful right hands, so there would have been no point in giving him extra time to shake off the blows. He should have taken the same kind of blow and been taken down, and that's exactly what happened. Okolie continued to take Rozanski down with his right hands.
Okolie's final knockdown was a right uppercut that dropped Rozanski like a bowling alley pin. Rozanski stumbled to his feet, watched as he stumbled back and forth, and waved it off. It would have been criminal for Rozanski to allow the bout to continue in his condition.
It was a great performance from Okolie, who is likely to move up to heavyweight in the future rather than stay at bridgeweight and fight unknown opponents for less money.
