Agit Kabayel continued an excellent run of form by chopping Zhilei Zhang with blistering body shots, though it wasn’t all plain sailing on the way to the stoppage.
The German heavyweight has been one of the biggest success stories of the Riyadh Season promotion, having been somwhat stagnant in the division before beating Arslanbek Makhmudov, Frank Sanchez and now ‘Big Bang.’
The general consensus pre-fight – even despite Zhang’s protests – was that if Kabayel could weather an early storm that the big 41-year-old Chinese southpaw would gas out, as he has shown to do in the past.
Under extreme pressure, Zhang seemed to turn the tide with a left hook in the fifth that put Kabayel on his back. Kabayel recovered well, though, and scored a final sickening body shot in the sixth that saw Zhang unable to beat the count.
Speaking to Seconds Out post-fight, the giant slayer said it was always the plan to come on strong as the fight progressed.
“Every training we go to the body, go to the head. My coach said after the fifth round you will see he has no condition. You will break him. And you see, I broke him.”
He then praised Zhang’s power, however said the knockdown was not from a hard punch.
“No, Zhang has a very hard punch but hen he punched me that time I didn’t see it, that was the problem. He punched me, I go down and I stand up. That punch was not hard. In my head I was crazy – I was going to fight [when I got back up]. My coach said, ‘don’t fight, wait.’ Okay, I waited and you seen I brought him down.”
Where Zhang goes next is unclear. As for Kabayel, he is edging closer to a well-deserved world title shot. Now the WBC Interim Champion, he is in line for a shot at Oleksandr Usyk, though he is much more likely to get his chance at a crowning moment when the belts fragment.
