Chambers Not Impressive in Beating Dimitrenko

By Chris Williams Count me in as the lone voice of reason as far as heavyweight Eddie Chambers’ (35-1, 18 KO’s) 12-round majority decision victory over World Boxing Organization heavyweight contender Alexander Dimitrenko (29-1, 19 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Color Line Arena, in Hamburg, Germany. It’s good for Chambers to get the victory; I’ll give him that, because it does put him in as the mandatory challenger for WBO title holder Wladimir Klitschko for a fight sometime in 2010.

However, let’s not kid ourselves about the victory here. Chambers, 27, didn’t do much until Dimitrenko faded after the 5th round. Had Chambers been fighting a normal heavyweight with power and talent, someone like Kevin Johnson, Chris Arreola or Alexander Povetkin, Chambers would have probably lost the fight. Chambers already was beaten by Povetkin by a 12 round decision in January 2008. Dimitrenko, 26, didn’t look like he belonged in the same ring with Chambers on Saturday night.

Before this fight, Dimitrenko had been brought up incredibly slowly by his German handlers and I often wondered what the problem was, because Dimitrenko looked good against the C-level opponents he had been matched up against before the Chambers fight.

I could tell that Dimitrenko had no power, but with his 6′7 250 pound frame, I figured he would be good enough to beat a good heavyweight by using his size and boxing from the outside. But I was wrong, and should have realized after watching Dimitrenko fight Danny Batchelder and Billy Zumbrun that Dimitrenko was incapable of keeping his opponents on the outside because his jab wasn’t good or consistent enough to make his shorter opponents not want to come inside.

This is exactly what Chambers did on Saturday. It took him awhile though, because Chambers really didn’t get going until after the 5th round when he started lighting Dimitrenko up with hard combinations on the inside starting in the 6th. Dimitrenko still fought well enough though that the rounds were close.

This wasn’t a fight where Chambers was running away with it and totally dominating at any one time. He would have a really good round and then look positively average in the next round and get hit a lot by Dimtrenko’s left hook and right hands. Case in point, Chambers looked good in the 7th, a round in which he hit Dimitrenko with a left hook to the mid back.

Dimitrenko looked like he didn’t want to fight any more and seemed to be looking for an escape. But Chambers then looked bad in the 9th and got hit an enormous amount of times by Dimitrenko, who circled him and jabbed Chambers silly. I couldn’t help watching that round and wondering what a much more powerful Wladimir Klitschko would do to Chambers with his much more powerful jab and his other bigger offensive weapons.

If Wladimir was able to jab Chambers at will the way that Dimitrenko did in that round, Chambers’ face would be swollen and possibly busted up by the end of the round. Chambers came back in the 10th and hurt Dimitrenko with a left hook that knocked him down.

That was Chambers at his best in that round. But in the 11th, Dimitrenko came back and was firing Chambers up with left hooks, right hands and jabs to the head. With Dimitrenko keeping on the move and firing off jabs, Chambers was helpless and couldn’t get close to throw his short combinations.

That was Chambers nullified by Dimitrenko. In the 12th, Dimitrenko decided to stop moving and ended up getting hurt by some uppercuts and hooks by Chambers. If he had stayed on the move and kept firing off his jab and hooks, Dimitrenko would have won this round without any problems but he just looked too tired and not with it mentally and allowed Chambers to close the distance and get the better of him.

Chambers won the fight but I can’t say that he was all that impressive. I was more unimpressed with Dimitrenko, who showed that his power, stamina and jab need a lot of work. If anything, all he had to do was work on his jab in training camp and he would have won this fight easily. However, Dimitrenko looked terrified going out of the bell and didn’t seem ready for the fight mentally.

To say that he was psyched out would be putting lightly. He looked like he was totally stressed out walking into the ring before the fight and didn’t seem ready for what he was about to face. All he needed was a good game plan and this would have been an easy fight for him. However, he looked as if he was making up his fight strategy on the fly and not thinking with his head.

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