By Nate Anderson: British light middleweight Jamie Moore (30-3, 21 KOs) wants a shot at Irish middleweight star John Duddy, and is hoping that the two of them can meet up later on this year. Moore, 29, stopped Ireland’s Ciaran Healy in the 3rd round this past Saturday night in Dublin. However, there are a lot of things that have to happen for this fight to occur, starting with Moore being able to beat undefeated Russian Zaurbek Baysangurov (18-0, 13 KOs), whom he fights for his EBU (European) light middleweight title coming up.
Frankly, I have serious doubts that Moore, as good as he is, can beat a fighter as skilled and as hard-hitting as the 23 year-old Baysangurov, who has a excellent chin, good power, and even better stamina, not breaking a sweat no matter how late in the fight it is. Baysangurov is simply too young and powerful for Moore, and will likely beat him up and stop him in short order. If, however, Moore can get lucky and beat Baysangurov, then he would still have to hope that Duddy can get by his next opponent, IBF light middleweight champion Verno Phillips, who Duddy plans on facing in October.
Duddy will be dropping down in weight to face Phillips, and will be dealing with a fighter with arguably better skills than any other opponent that Duddy has faced thus far in his short boxing career, including Howard Eastman. I personally think that Phillips will have too much power, and be much too busy for the limited Duddy to beat. I expect Phillips to stop Duddy in seven or eight rounds, cutting him to pieces in the process. However, if Duddy can get lucky, then we’ll perhaps be seeing Duddy vs. Moore sometime early next year. Moore appears to be the better fighter of the two, having beaten previously Matthew Macklin in a 10th round TKO in September 2006, a fighter that was perhaps the fight of the year in British boxing.
I’d rate Macklin also above Duddy, which shows you how much I think of Macklin. I’d much prefer to see Moore go up against Macklin in a rematch, because their previous fight was incredibly exciting, with Macklin out-boxing and out-slugging Moore early on, but then tiring out and getting stopped in the late rounds of the fight. Both Moore and Macklin would likely easily carve Duddy up like a turkey if given the chance.
This would be a silly fight for Duddy to make, that of fighting Moore, because he would likely beat him and tarnish Duddy’s image even more than it already has been done in the past year. Duddy doesn’t do well with fighters that apply a lot of pressure him like Moore typically does to his opponents, and I can’t see him being able to fend Moore off with a few flicking jabs like Duddy did to his last Opponent Charlie Howe two weeks ago. Moore would walk right through Duddy’s jabs and rough him up on the inside, forcing him into another war. I doubt that Duddy’s face would hold up under the batter that Moore would give him.
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