BERNSTEIN ON BOXING
six knockdowns – ALL by body shots. When he gets a fighter in trouble with body shots, he shows the discipline and ring intellect to double down for the stoppage. 2. He has a great chin. Knyba landed some big power punches and did not shake him. Kabayel had suffered a knockdown against the big punching Zhang but got right up and stopped Zhang in the next round. He has very good punch resistance. 3. The great chin saves him from his defensive liabilities. In the Knyba fight, as in some others, Kabayel showed vulnerability: When he walks down his opponents, he sometimes keeps his hands low and can square himself up, inviting a straight shot down the middle. 4. When he uses his jab, his offense is very impressive. He can be effective without it, but the difference between the Kabayel who comes in behind an authoritative jab and the Kabayel who does not is huge. With it, he is an offensive machine. Using the jab masks the defensive problems almost entirely. What all that adds up to is an exciting, all-action heavyweight who has come from relative international obscurity to being a worldwide fan favorite. Support from the big pockets of Riyadh Season and a German fan base that appears willing to pack arenas for him provides a fascinating recipe for commercial boxing success. This brings us to the conundrum of Kabayel’s future and how it impacts the very intriguing heavyweight division. Other layoffs have slowed his career (he had only one fight per year for five straight years, from 2018 to 2022). He can ill afford that now. One issue is that a title shot against IBF, WBA, WBC and Ring Magazine champ Oleksandr Usyk is off the table for now because Usyk has Wilder penciled in as his next dance partner. A fight with Usyk (if he defends successfully against Wilder) is not likely until the end of the year. Kabayel must fight before that. The conventional business-oriented choice for him would be someone
After weathering punishment, Kabayel finished off Damian Knyba in the third round.
like Lawrence Okolie, the former cruiserweight titleholder who is now the No. 1-rated heavyweight contender in the WBC rankings. It can be sold to fans and media as a meaningful fight despite a lower threat level to Kabayel than some other fights might present. That all makes it palatable to the Kabayel team. Then there is the option that epitomizes what boxing does not do often enough. This is an option where boxing fans get exactly the fight they would really like to see – the one where two action fighters come together in a can’t-miss match. This is the one where newly crowned WBO titleholder Fabio Wardley puts his belt on the line against Kabayel. Am I being naive for even mentioning this possibility? Worse, am I possibly delusional, suggesting something that exists outside of boxing reality as we know it? The answer could be yes to those two questions. Or maybe not. Dream with me for a second. Kabayel said he is very open to a Wardley fight. Both fighters are promoted by Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions, and Riyadh
Season has been involved with both. That last fact is likely the key. Could there be enough financial incentive to make both fighters risk seeing a possible big-money showdown with Usyk slip away? Will Riyadh Season pony up the kind of money it will take to make this happen? For the sake of boxing fans, I hope the answer is yes. There are few boxing matches on the horizon as delicious as this one. The other thing that makes this a slightly less risky venture for Wardley and Kabayel is the undeniable fact that heavyweights can bounce back from a loss much easier than in other weight divisions. We have seen fighters like Parker, Wilder, Joe Joyce, Derek Chisora, Daniel Dubois, Anthony Joshua and others written off after a loss or even two, only to return for big fights. A loss for either man here does not end their time as an upper-echelon, money- making, title-contending heavyweight. Many in sports media these days seek to create actions in the discipline they cover, not just report on them. They want to be the ones moving the needle, either to produce something they want to see or think is good for their sport, or just to claim credit for making it happen. We have such people in boxing as well. I have not been a charter member of that group in my 41 years of service. But here and now, I am going to be an advocate. Count me in as a foot soldier in the battle to get a Wardley-Kabayel fight to happen. I ask other pundits and fans to join the fray to push for it to come to fruition. I also ask them to join me in taking a pledge not to denigrate the loser should he take this bold plunge when he didn’t have to do it. Both Kabayel and Wardley have had a slow, steady burn in their careers, which has put them both in rarified heavyweight championship air. I am now suggesting that they light a bonfire in the ring right there on the mountaintop.
the ring rust of the layoff and position himself for a major 2026 match, hopefully for a world title. Knyba provided the right opposition because he was unbeaten and a competent fighter. He demonstrated the latter in Round 1, stunning the crowd by raking Kabayel over the coals with jabs, uppercuts and straight right hands, resulting in a nasty cut over Kabayel’s right eye. Whether this was all due to the layoff or Kabayel’s penchant for defensive lapses can be debated. Whatever the reason, it created urgency in Kabayel; he needed to make
ABOUT TIME By Al Bernstein
sure this homecoming didn’t turn sour. He did just that by upping the ante in the second and third rounds, hurting Knyba with body shots and big right hands. The last big right completed a series of big blows that convinced referee Mark Lyson to stop the fight, even though Knyba had never hit the canvas. Many (including me) thought the stoppage was premature, though it certainly appeared that Kabayel had gotten control of the fight and might very likely have stopped Knyba after this point. Lyson’s quick trigger (whether out of incompetence or bias for the favorite) actually took away Kabayel’s chance for a more definitive and beneficial ending to this fight. Even in just under three rounds, this win reminded us of the four things that define Kabayel (27-0, 19 KOs) as a fighter: 1. He is one of the best body-punchers in boxing. He hurt Knyba several times to the body, and that is what set up the head shots that ended this fight. In his three signature wins over Makhmudov, Sanchez and Zhang, he scored
T here is an old bromide that heavyweight boxers come into their own later and stay better longer than boxers in lighter weight divisions. The first part has proven true for 33-year- old heavyweight Agit Kabayel, and he’s hoping the second part will as well. When Kabayel beat previously undefeated Polish giant Damian Knyba by stoppage in three rounds on January 10, he cemented his position as the people’s choice for top contender in the division. That win ended an 11-month layoff that was preceded by a trio of career-changing fights. After his career had slowly percolated for 12 years, the unbeaten Kabayel erupted with three major wins from December 2023 to February 2025, stopping Arslanbek Makhmudov, Frank Sanchez and Zhilei Zhang, in
Fabio Wardley vs. Kabayel would be satisfaction all but guaranteed for fans.
that order. Makhmudov and Sanchez were undefeated at the time, and Zhang, with only two losses in 30 fights, was coming off a KO win over Deontay Wilder and a close majority decision loss to Joseph Parker. All three of these Kabayel opponents were ranked in or just outside the top 10 when he fought them. The Knyba fight had two very important purposes. First, it was a homecoming for Germany’s Kabayel after the three aforementioned fights had dramatically jump-started his career in Saudi Arabia. It was designed to announce in a big way that major- league boxing was back in Germany and it succeeded on that front, with 13,000 boisterous fans filling the Rudolf Weber Arena in Oberhausen. Second, this fight was important to give Kabayel a chance to shake off
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