Steven Butler stops Stephane Fondjo in ninth in Montreal

Steven Butler halted Stephane Fondjo in the ninth round of a scheduled ten-round super middleweight bout at the Cabaret du Casino de Montréal on 13 November 2025, extending his unbeaten run at 168 pounds and adding another inside-the-distance win in front of his home crowd. The Montrealer, now 37-5-1 with 31 stoppages, scored four knockdowns in total before referee Martin Forest intervened late in the ninth, handing Fondjo, based in Canada but originally from Cameroon, the first inside-the-distance defeat of his 14-2-1, 9-knockout record.

The opening third of the contest belonged on the scorecards to Butler, even if the pattern of exchanges told a more complicated story. He started quickly, looking to impose himself with the right hand and backing Fondjo up to the ropes, where a heavy shot in the early going drove the visitor into the ropes and forced Forest to pick up a count. Over the first three rounds, Fondjo had to take two counts. Yet, he rarely appeared badly shaken and continued to answer back with enough punches to prevent Butler from building the kind of sustained momentum he usually enjoys. Local reports noted that despite those early knockdowns, Fondjo’s work-rate and insistence often gave him the better of the action through these sessions, forcing Butler into more exchanges than the favourite would have preferred.

Once the bout moved into the middle rounds, the pattern shifted in Fondjo’s favour. Having adjusted to Butler’s timing, he began to step inside more confidently and let his right hand go, testing the home fighter’s chin and marking up Butler’s face. The Cameroonian was described as taking over the fight in the middle rounds. By the latter part of the contest, Butler was visibly damaged around his right eye, a clear indication of the success Fondjo was having when he managed to push the former middleweight onto the back foot. Butler, who has spoken recently about improved stamina since moving up in weight following a stoppage loss to Patrice Volny in 2024, had to rely on that better engine here as he soaked up long right hands and spells of pressure that quietened the crowd and made the fight far more competitive than the early knockdowns suggested.

The eighth round proved to be the turning point. With the bout finely poised after Fondjo’s productive middle-session work, Butler raised his tempo and began to reassert himself behind heavier combinations. Late in the round, he found the breakthrough again, driving Fondjo to the canvas area in an exchange that came right on, or just after, the signal to end the session. That knockdown, Butler’s third of the night, shifted the balance back towards the Montreal fighter at a crucial moment and left Fondjo returning to his corner with the effects of the late assault still evident. The sense from ringside coverage was that, while the visitor had outboxed Butler in stretches, the accumulation of damage and the extra point scored in the eighth had tilted the momentum decisively back towards the local man.

Fondjo attempted to reset at the start of the ninth, but Butler closed the show with the kind of late surge that had been missing from some of his performances at middleweight. In the closing moments of the round, he drove home a right hand followed by a wide left hook, a finishing combination that sent Fondjo back into the ropes and produced the fourth knockdown ruling of the contest. The ropes held the Cameroon native up, but his legs betrayed him as he tried to steady himself, and Forest, taking in the delayed reaction and the accumulation of punishment from earlier in the night, stepped in to halt the contest without administering a further count. The time was given as late in the ninth, handing Butler his third consecutive stoppage at super middleweight and underlining the sense, expressed in recent interviews, that he now carries his power more effectively over the longer distance at 168 pounds.

For Butler, already a two-time world title challenger at lower weights, the victory was less about a highlight-reel finish than about navigating a difficult, resilient opponent who had not come merely to survive. Fondjo, fighting in Canada for the fourth time and stepping in on relatively short notice after Erik Bazinyan withdrew through injury, left the ring with his reputation enhanced despite the stoppage, having banked long stretches of the middle rounds and troubled Butler’s right eye with a steady stream of right hands. The final statistic of four knockdowns and a ninth-round TKO only tells part of the story of an evening in Montreal where the favourite had to draw on experience, conditioning and punching power to wrest back control of a contest that, for several rounds, threatened to slip away from him.