Alexander Povetkin flattens Carlos Takam in 10th

Oct

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Heavyweight contender Alexander Povetkin scored his second straight knockout against Carlos Takam on Friday, flattening the respected fringe contender in the 10th-round at the Luzhniki Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia.

Povetkin (28-1, 20 knockouts) dropped Takam (30-2-1, 23 KOs) flat on his back with a hard right cross that was followed by a short but crisp left hook-uppercut. As Takam lay motionless, the referee knelt over him him and waved an end to the fight.

A 2004 Olympic gold medalist, Povetkin, who turned 35 last month, was coming off a seventh-round knockout of Manuel Charr in May that helped him to bounce back from a unanimous decision loss to RING champion Wladimir Klitschko in October.

In his previous two fights, Takam, 33, had battled to a draw with Mike Perez in January and won a unanimous decision over Tony Thompson in his last bout in June.

In another bout on the card, Charr (27-2, 16 KOs), who turned 30 on Oct. 10, scored a fifth-round knockout over former title challenger Michael Grant (48-5, 36 KOs), who retired on his stool. Grant, 42, had been out of action since falling to Takam by eighth-round technical knockout in May 2013.

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