In round 8 Johnson finally came alive, moved up a gear and clearly won the round as he put pressure on Hammer for the first time. Unfortunately he failed to push forward and really hunt the stoppage and as a result left us with a predictable decision loss. Unfortunately Hammer proved nothing here and Johnson did what Johnson does, very little.
On the same card in Germany we saw three other Heavyweight bouts. These saw the unbeaten Marcin Rekowski (12-0, 10) getting an unexpectedly tough test as he narrowly took a split decision over Serdar Uysal (14-19-2, 7), this result sums up just how limited Rekowski really is. The other bouts saw Nikola Milacic (2-1, 2) throwing away his unbeaten record with a DQ loss to Andrzej Witkowski (9-9, 4) whilst Birkan Akyol (3-0, 1) extended his winning run with a decision over Patryk Kowoll (2-11, 1).
As well as the sleeper in Germany we also had action in Ghana where Richard Lartey (6-0, 6) was crowned the new national champion courtesy of a 2nd round KO over Aduku Nsor (6-9, 6). Although the national title, being fougth for for the first time since 2008, was the headline story it's worth noting that Nsor has not failed to go the distance in 15 fights, he either scores a stoppage or gets stopped.
There was also action, much earlier int he day, in Australia. These bouts saw Bowie Tupou (23-3, 16) out point the surprisingly tough Junior Maletino Iakopo (1-11-2) and and Joe Lloyd (4-6, 4) swiftly despatch of Luke Barclay (1-1).