Arreola-Adamek: Heavyweights Take Center Stage

This weekend there is a heavyweight fight on American soil that you can actually get excited about. On Saturday night, HBO will televise the bout between heavyweight contender Cristobal Arreola, and World Cruiserweight Champion Tomasz Adamek (who is making his third heavyweight appearance, but this is his biggest test at the weight). This is a fight not to be missed, and it comes along with a co-feature in Alfredo Angulo against fellow banger Joel Julio, that could serve as a main event on it’s own. I’m lucky enough to be covering it for HBO Boxing and shot the weigh-in yesterday in Ontario, CA.

The weigh-in took place in a small hotel conference room at the Hilton Ontario Airport, and didn’t lend the best opportunities from a photographic standpoint, but what was stranger was the scale seemed very unsteady, both fighters had to step off before the weights were read, so no poses on the scale. While weights don’t really matter for heavyweights, they will make a difference for the undercard weighin later.

Both fighters looked very relaxed, Cris Arreola kept joking around while on the scale and sliding the weights around while laughing, although with the already shaky scale I’m not sure the commission was amused quite as much as others in attendance.

Tomasz Adamek was also in a great mood, signing autographs and posing for pictures with those in attendance.

When it came time to face-off though the mood changed considerably as both fighters seemingly snapped back, realizing the importance of the fight to their careers, and put on the traditional show of bravado in a hope to intimidate their opponent.

Both fighters are coming off quality performances, with Arreola dismantling Brian Minto in December in Atlantic City, and Adamek outboxing Jason Estrada over 12 rounds at the Prudential Center in Newark, NJ.


The fight shapes up to be a great one, competitive and hard fought. It’s Arreola’s size (30lb weight advantage) and punching power, against Adamek’s superior boxing skills, combinations and granite chin. Tough for me to pick against either guy personally, they are both likable exciting fighters. While Arreola took some heat for his profanity laced tear-ridden emotional outburst after losing to Klitschko (no shame there), how can you not like him, he wore his heart on his sleeve and let it out on TV, most athletes are afraid of that.

Adamek comes off as a bit stoic, partially because he speaks broken english, but he’s a great guy. I had the opportunity to work with him in December for a Main Events photo shoot and he was very personable, always joking around and after the shoot, made my assistant Josh Lehrer take a few shots of us together, for which I could not keep a straight face during our staredown.

So who wins??? It’s truly a pick ‘em fight, if Arreola can smother Adamek, he can probably wear him down and stop him late. If Adamek can control the distance, in and out with combination punching and stand up to a true heavyweight puncher, he can win the fight. If he stands in front of Arreola and slugs (which he tends to do at times) he’s dead in the water. I’m going with the latter, I think Adamek can take Arreola’s shots, he might get hurt or even dropped along the way, but will survive and outbox the bigger man over the distance. He not fighting in front of 10,000+ screaming polish fans in Newark, NJ, so I think he sticks to the plan. Adamek by close but unanimous decision in a very exciting bout. (Maybe there is a bit of personal rooting in that though…hehe…)

Either way, if you can’t be in the arena on Saturday night, do not miss this card, catch it on HBO and make sure you don’t miss the Alfredo Angulo-Joel Julio opener, that may steal the show!

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 9:39 am and is filed under Boxing Photography and tagged with Boxing Photography, Boxing Stock Photography, Brian Minto, California, Cristobal Arreola, HBO, HBO Boxing, Jason Estrada, Tomasz Adamek. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.