By Alexey Sukachev

It looked like Alexander Gurov's lengthy career has hit its end, when he was held to a majority decision loss in June 2007 against Vincenzo Cantatore in his fifth rally at the EBU cruiserweight title. Gurov fought two months later and stopped late Vitaliy Shkraba in his farewell fight. Yet five years later, now 41 years old, the Ukrainian is still going on with prizefighting. Moreover, he is still capable of winning some obscure trinkets albeit against extremely poor opposition.

On Monday, it took Gurov (now 42-6-1, 36 KOs) less than a round to dismantle previously undefeated Brazilian Edson Roberto Dos Santos Borges (with a reported record of 21-0-1, 16 KOs) in a bid for a vacant IBC cruiserweight title in Mariupol, Ukraine.

Borges was down in less than a minute, was very groggy but the referee let it go, and the Brazilian went down again seconds (and punches) later - this time for the count.

The end was expected. Edson Borges, 38, compiled his sound record by fighting no-names in his native land. There are two fighters with winning records (2-1 and 3-2) in his BoxRec list, and in his most recent outing he was lucky to get a SD 4 against a 2-10 opponent. The sad state of Brazilian club fighting was once again confirmed in Ukraine, which saw another of this sort in a so-called WBO interim light middleweight championship a year ago, when Zaurbek Baysangurov knocked out Mike Miranda, with a very thick padding in his record, in less than a minute.