Trainers Joe Goossen and Ronnie Shields are big fans of fast-rising heavyweight Adam Kownacki, who fights Robert Helenius on Saturday.
Adam Kownacki is accumulating fans worldwide as a result of his aggressive, heavy-handed style and ongoing success.
Among those fans are respected trainers Joe Goossen and Ronnie Shields, both of whom expressed their admiration for the Polish-born heavyweight on the most-recent The PBC Podcast. Goossen has had several up-close looks at Kownacki, in the opposite corner as trainer of Chris Arreola and as a Fox TV analyst. Shields has watched from afar.
Kownacki (20-0, 15 KOs) faces Robert Helenius (29-3, 18 KOs) in a title eliminator Saturday at Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn, Kownacki’s hometown, on Fox.
“I love this guy,” Shields said on the podcast. “He’s one of the most exciting heavyweights in the division right now. He brings it, man. Just looking from the outside looking in, he’s a very exciting guy and he can fight.
“So I look forward to seeing his fights all the time. He’s one of those guys you just want to keep looking at over and over because you know he’s going to bring it.”
Goossen feels the same way about Kownacki, who is 6-foot-3 and weighed in at a typically thick 265½ on Friday.
“Listen,” Goossen said and then chuckled. “He’s an unusual character in this game. He’s a real force in the ring. … When you see him up close and personal, he’s a very, very sturdy looking guy and I’m using the loosest of terms. Just his wrists, his calves, his thighs. Just everything about him is extra big, extra thick.
“Not only that but he’s very, very active in the ring. In other words, he throws an inordinate number of punches for a heavyweight. … And he takes a great punch. He’s very hard to dissuade from enforcing his will upon you and he normally succeeds at doing just that.”
Of course, Goossen said, Kownacki isn’t a perfect fighter.
For example, Kownacki landed an impressive 369 punches (of 1,047 thrown) but also took 298 (of a heavyweight record (1,125) in his 12-round, unanimous-decision victory over Arreola in August. In other words, Kownacki can be hit.
That’s something he should work on, Goossen said.
“He’s hard to hurt, I tell you that,” Goossen said. “But … defensively, yes, he makes some mistakes that could cost him dearly against extremely powerful punchers.”
And Goossen feels Kownacki was surprised by the resistance he met from Arreola, so much so that he learned a valuable lesson.
“Kownacki said something very interesting to me in his last fight, which was against Arreloa, in the ring after the fight. … He said, ‘I needed this fight,’” Goossen said. “… I think we kind of caught him off guard. I think he may have let his guard down in training just a bit. Being a professional he probably worked very hard but he might say to himself, ‘I can work harder,’ like every fighter. … I think that fight really woke him up.”
Still, Goossen believes Kownacki has been ready for a title shot for some time.
“A world title shot for him could’ve come several times just in the past year or so,” he said. “It’s not that he wasn’t ready to fight somebody for a world title. It’s just a matter of getting that business opportunity. I think that’s going to be coming up once the air clears soon with [titleholders Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua].
“With a big win Saturday night, I think he puts himself very close to getting an opportunity to fight for a world title. … I think it’ll eventually happen for Kownacki. And when it does, he’s got a great chance of becoming a world champion.”
