WBC heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev (34-5, 26 KOs) will be making his 2nd title defense on October 6th when he meets up with Nigerian knockout slugger Samuel Peter at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Maskaev, 38, is on a 12 consecutive win streak, dating back to February 2003. Previous to that, Maskaev had been plagued by chin problems, causing him to lose a string of vicious knockout losses to hard-punching – and severely limited – Kirk Johnson, Lance Whitaker and Corey Sanders between 2000-2001.
After the loss to Sanders, who incidentally Maskaev was dominating at the time of his stoppage loss in the 8thy round in March 2002, he as considered damaged goods by many boxing experts, that he could no longer take a hard punch. However, instead of giving up, Maskaev took a year off from boxing and let his head recover from the knockouts, something perhaps he should have done after the first of the knockout losses to Kirk Johnson, a fight that Maskaev suffered a brutal 4th round knockout loss.
Upon returning to the ring a year later, Maskaev was matched against soft-punching opponents exclusively for his next nine fights until meeting up with Sinan Samil Sam in November 2005 for the WBC title eliminator bout. Maskaev, subsequently won a commanding 12-round unanimous decision, thus setting him up with a bout with WBC heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman, a fighter that Maskaev had knocked cold in the 8th round six years earlier in 1999. As before, Maskaev had Rahman’s number, leading the bout going into the 12th round when he, again, knocked out Rahman to take his title.
In his first title defense, Maskaev opted to go soft by selecting African Peter Okhello, whom he easily beat by 12-round unanimous decision in December 2006, in Moscow, Russia. Since then, Maskaev has been inactive for the past nine months.
Most fans give Maskaev little chance at beating the 26-year old Peter, mostly because of Maskaev’s previous problems with hard-punching fighters. To be sure, Peter punches harder than most of the fighters in the heavyweight division, and his style is one of exerting constant pressure on his opponents, giving them little time for rest. What makes him even more dangerous, though, is his used of punches to the back of the head., i.e., otherwise known as “rabbit punches.” This is something that Peter does, whether intentional or not, almost ever time he throws a punch, making his normally hard punches even more devastating. Like a pitcher that is unable to throw anything that doesn’t have a break on it, Peter finds himself in a position of throwing everything that arcs to the back of his opponent’s heads. So far, he’s been lucky to have fought with referees that haven’t penalized him for this punch. However, sooner or later, he’ll meet up with a ref that will deduct points, and perhaps even go a step further and disqualify him for this illegal punch.
Against IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, Peter found great success using the rabbit punch, as he was able to knock Wladimir down twice with the punch and once without it. As it was, Wladimir badly outclassed him in the rounds that he was able to avoid the rabbit punch, making Peter look like a rank amateur. However, the rabbit punch evened the score and had the fight close in the final round, when Peter forgot that Wladimir can punch pretty hard himself, and walked into one of Wladimir’s powerful left hooks that badly wobbled Peter, causing him to lose the round and the fight.
Peter followed this with fights against journeymen fighters Robert Hawkins and Julius Long, both of whom Peter easily beat. After this, Peter took on the wily veteran James Toney last year, in September 2006, and again in January 2007. Although Peter struggled in beating Toney by split decision in the first bout, Peter improved measurably in the 2nd, winning an easy 12-round decision over an obese Toney.
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