Oleksandr Sergeyevich Gvozdyk vs. Badou Johannes Gabriel Jack

To be fair, Jack's WBA belt was BS, and he chose Stevenson over Bivol. You can't really call that a duck.
H2H, Bivol might be better than Stevenson, But Stevenson was the far more proven fighter.
Jack chose to fight and actual champion over a prospect.

 

This is a good scrap.

 

That flew over your head.

 

This would be the first time I could envision the draw being the odds-on favorite outcome.

 

This is America, son. Call him Al Bob Grizzly.

(My paternal grandfathers name was Fortunato; in America he was called Al. My maternal grandfather's name was Domenico, in America he was called Al).

 

Why didn't they just refer to your mom's pop as "Dom"? I feel like that's a perfectly common, Americanized-sounding nickname, instead of having to make a cosmic leap to "Al".

 

Well he was a Mussolini supporter ( we're talking 1930's/1940's) so he was lucky they didn't send him back to Calabria. Dom sounds too much like Dumb, I guess . And he was working with other construction workers not Harvard Business School grads.

 

Hey, give @Chuck Norris a break, one vowel off, innocent mistake and he's usually pretty meticulous with this kind of thing, as is @CST80 (along with @Serge & I) - and until you pointed it out this past weekend I don't think any of us even realized Gvozdyk had a patronymic/middle name. For some reason, even though most EE boxers have it listed on their Wikipedia page if not on BoxRec, his doesn't appear on either - nor does his full name incl. the patronymic get mentioned in any Russian- or Ukrainian- language articles that I could find just doing a search of his name in Cyrillic...which is unusual. You don't often hear the second "G" in "GGG" (that is, Gennadyevich) in Western media but quite often enough in Kazakhstan and Russia he is referred to as "Геннадий Геннадьевич Головкин"...but with Gvozdyk, his is almost never used, that I can tell.

 

Eh, maybe this is a biased perspective due to me living in the northeastern urban sprawl but to me "Dom" has very much a connotation of "blue-collar, salt of the earth" type guy. I could buy a construction worker character in a movie called Dom equally as much as I'd suspend my disbelief for one named Al.

 

This is a very good fight. and among the top 5 best fights that can be made at the weight. But Bivol/Gvozdyk is the fight to make next year. Hopefully it happens sooner rather than later. Kovalev/Stevenson never happening was a shame. Although it's probably good for Stevensons sake based on what happened the other night. Kovalev is viscous and hates him, a Simakov like scenario wouldn't have been out of the question.

 

That fight can still happen.

 

First of all, @Chuck Norris doesn't need breaks — he's a superman.
Second, the reason I corrected it was because I'd realized that it will go forever — he took it from the RBR thread and the next Gvozdyk fight someone would take it from their as well — on and on, year by year. Not good.

Regarding patronymic names — anyone from the post USSR space has it. Even those guys from the mountainous outskirts. Which sound ridiculous many times because their names are often long and making a patronymic makes it even longer.
If we talk about Gvozdyk personally (about his names) nothing at all is strange. Gvozdyk is a dictionary word (so if it sounds strange, it just means some words from Russian/Ukrainian sound strange to foreigners) his name (Oleksandr) is very widespread. So as his patronymic — Sergiyovich.

 

Excellent fight,

I would imagine the build up to this fight being very professional for both the fighters and even a good majority of ESB members. These two gents are very likable and hard working.

That said I wouldn’t be shocked at all if a couple knuckle heads feel compelled to drag this down like they do every other fight.

I give the younger bigger Govozdy the edge here UD/late stoppage although I’ll be routing for Jack since I’m a big fan of the dude.