Marco Huck vs. Brian Minto on May 1st – News

By Jim Dower: World Boxing Organization cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (28-1, 21 KO’s) will be fighting former heavyweight contender Brian Minto (34-3, 21 KO’s) on May 1st at the EWE-Arena, Oldenburg, Niedersachsen, Germany. The 25-year-old Huck will be making his second title defense of his WBO cruiserweight belt against the 35-year-old Minto, who is moving down from the heavyweight division because he doesn’t have the size to compete against the best heavyweights in the division.

Although some boxing fans and writers are looking at the Huck-Minto fight as a great fight, I’m not one of them. I see it as a stinker, just as I thought the fight between Huck and Adam Richards was a horrible mismatch even before the two stepped foot inside the ring. Minto is getting up there in age at 35, and has never beaten anyone that I consider a quality 1st tier fighter. To be sure, Minto has beaten guys like Vinny Maddalone, Danny Batchelder, Donnell Holmes and Billy Zumbrun, but I don’t consider those fighters as top tier heavyweights.

Maybe the best win of Minto’s eight year pro career was his 6th round stoppage win over Axel Axel Schulz in 2006, but that fight wasn’t all that impressive win you take in the fact that Schulz was coming off a seven year layoff because he was retired from boxing. Schulz seemed like he was just there for a paycheck. Minto was defeated by Luan Krasniqi by a 12 round decision three years ago in 2007.

Minto fought decent in the early rounds but took punishment in the last four rounds of the bout and ended up getting dropped by a big right hand from Krasniqi. Minto didn’t have the size or the power to compete with Krasniqi. And most recently, Minto was crushed by 6’4” Chris Arreola in a 4th round stoppage loss in December.

Minto fought heroically in the first two rounds, taking the fight to the much bigger Arreola. However, Arreola had Minto’s right eye badly bruised by the end of the 2nd round, and Minto’s shots seemed more of a nuisance factor than anything that Arreola was worried about. It was as if Arreola was fighting a mosquito instead of a real threat to him. He was just too big and powerful for the little, stubby Minto.

In the 3rd round, Arreola was landing much more often and had Minto’s face looking badly bruised. In the 4th, Arreola dropped Minto with a nice right to the head. Minto got up and was met with a lot of heavy shots, ending with Arreola tagging him with a left-right combination that put Minto down for the second and final time in the round.

Huck, for his part, has defeated Victor Emilio Ramirez, Ola Afolabi and Richards in this last three fights. The fights against Ramirez and Afolabi were good match-ups, but I was less than impressed with the choice of Richards as an opponent, and I’m even more disappointed with Minto being put in with Huck. I see this as another hopeless mismatch.

I just hope that once Huck gets this fight over with and out of the way, he takes on someone arguably more dangerous such as number #1 WBO contender southpaw Denis Lebedev, Alexander Alekseev, BJ Flores, Yoan Pablo Hernandez or Steve Cunningham. Huck was already stopped by Cunningham in the 12th round in their fight three years ago in 2007, so I highly doubt that Huck’s German handlers will allow for him to be put in with a fighter like Cunningham any time soon.

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