Oliver Güttel – A Future Champion or Just Another Contender?

By Erik Schmidt: Last Saturday night, German welterweight prospect Oliver Guettel (14-1, 8 KOs) defeated Felix Lora by a 4th round TKO to defend his WBC World Youth welterweight title at the Mittellandhalle, Barleben, in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. I’ve seen Guettel, 23, fight on several occasions and this was by far the best he’s looked in either of the three fights. Usually, Guettel has a nasty habit of charging forward with his head like a Billy Goat, ending up ramming his head to the chest or head of his opponents resulting in quite a few clash of heads.

This time, though, Guettel fought in a much more disciplined manner, keeping his distance, throwing jabs and refraining from his head-ramming of his opponent. His hand speed is nothing to get excited about, but his foot movement and jab are quite excellent. He reminds me a little of Sebastian Zbik and Felix Sturm, only without their good right hand power. However, at twenty-three, Guettel may improve with his right hand power in time and be even better fighters than either Sturm or Zbik.

He had a few problems in the first round against Lora on Saturday night, taking some hard combinations to the head. There’s no shame in that, however, because Lora, 24, from Spain, had really good hand speed and pretty good raw skills of his own despite his poor record. Guettel covered up in the first round, waiting out Lora’s fast start and trying to pick off as many punches as he could with his tight guard.

Lora continued fighting well in the 2nd round, throwing good shots to the head, and moving well around the ring. I was very impressed with his speed, as he wasn’t giving Guettel much of a chance to do anything other than mechanically pumping out jabs one after another. In the 3rd round, Guettel suddenly started throwing right hands, showing good power and looking like a completely different fighter than he had been in the previous two rounds.

Near the end of the round, Guettel caught Lora with a hard right hand, dropping him to the canvas with Lora’s head hitting the bottom rope as he fell and coming to a rest at the spot. Lora got up at the count of eight and went into the survival mode for the remainder of the round as Guettel went after him with sweeping right hands to the head. Lora was staggered before the bell with another big right hand.

In the 4th round, Guettel landed some hard jabs initially, and then started hitting Lora with some hammering right hands and left hooks. He hurt Lora with two big right hands, dropping him to the canvas with a short left hook. Lora got up at the count of three, and the action resumed with Guettel fiercely attacking Lora with chopping right hands. After Guettel landed three consecutive right hands to the head, Lora stumbled backwards and fell to the canvas for the second time in the round. He didn’t appear to have fallen down from the punch, however, because he looked to have tripped over the bottom rope and lost his footing. The referee did Lora a favor, anyway, by stopping the fight because Lora would have been taken out if the fight had lasted longer.

Guettel looked pretty good, but it’s hard to tell how good he really is as a fighter because he’s still facing mostly soft opposition. He needs to consider stepping it up against someone marginally good like the hard-punching Selcuk Aydin. I doubt he could beat him, but at least we’d know where he’s at in losing.

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