Efe Ajagba looked every bit the heavyweight prospect on the Adam Kownacki-Robert Helenius card Saturday night in Brooklyn.
Ajagba’s fight against Razvan Cojanu looked largely the same from beginning to end, which Ajagba controlling almost every moment of every round. What looked different when the fight was stopped in the ninth round was Cojanu’s battered face.
Ajagba, fighting behind his steady jab, pounded Cojanu to both the head and body round after round until the Romanian began to break down in the middle rounds.
Cojanu took a knee after absorbing a straight round with about a minute remaining in Round 8. And Ajagba stayed on top of him until Cojanu did the same thing in the ninth, the fighter’s way of saying he had taken enough punishment.
Referee Ron Liption ended the fight at that point.
Ajagba (13-0, 11 KOs) was coming off a fifth-round stoppage of Iago Kiladze but the Nigerian went down in that fight. There were no slip-ups against Cojanu. It was complete domination.
Cojanu (17-7, 9 KOs) has now lost five of his last six fights.
In another heavyweight fight on the card, prospect Frank Sanchez, who reportedly had more than 200 amateur fights for his native Cuba, defeated Joey Dawejko by a near-shutout decision in a 10-round bout.
Sanchez, who is 6-foot-4 and athletic, easily outboxed the shorter Dawejko behind a long jab, landed more than enough power shots to win rounds and demonstrated the ability to use his feet to stay out of harm’s way from the opening bell.
Dawejko, only 5-10 and portly, simply couldn’t get close enough to Sanchez to land punches with any consistency.
Sanchez (15-0, 11 KOs) outlanded Dawejko (20-8-4, 11 KOs) by about a 2½-1 ratio to win 100-90, 100-90 and 98-92.