Klitschko-Chambers: Wladimir badly needs an impressive knockout win

By Chris Williams: I see this fight as a one-sided bout with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (53-3, 47 KO’s) dominating with his jab. American Eddie Chambers (35-1, 18 KO’s) is coming into this fight the much smaller fighter compared to the 6’6” Klitschko, and doesn’t have the power to make Wladimir respect him. Without power to keep Wladimir from holding back on his power shots, Chambers will be a sitting duck in the early going of the fight. Chambers will not want to trade after getting hit with some of Wladimir]s big shots in the first few rounds.

If you look at Chambers’ loss to Alexander Povetkin in 2008, Chambers played it safe after starting out fast in the early part of the fight. Once Povetkin got his offense in gear, Chambers fought at a distance and mostly pot shotted for the remainder of the fight. That was the wrong way to fight Povetkin, who simply walked through Chamber’s occasional pot shots and worked him over with high volume punch attack for 12 rounds.

Wladimir won’t throw a lot of punches like Povetkin, because that’s not how he fights, but I think he’s going to mostly have his way with Chambers for 12 rounds. If Chambers gets brave and really tries to win, I see him running into one of Wladimir’s big shots. Chambers does want to win the title awfully badly, but I think he’s going to be intimidated by Wladimir once he gets hit really hard by him once or twice.

He’ll not want to go out on his back, and will probably spend the better part of the fight doing a Chris Byrd imitation on the outside. Chambers is hard to hit cleanly, and is probably the best defensive heavyweight in the division when he’s putting his focus on his defense and not his offense. He should be able to make Wladimir work for 12 rounds to get the win. It won’t one of those fights in which Wladimir clubs his opponent into submission because Chambers will stick to the outside or perhaps get in close and clinch Wladimir all night long.

Chambers resembles Monte Barrett and Byrd in terms of size, and is maybe a little more powerful than either of them. He has better hand speed, but his lack of size will be a problem. 209 pounds is much too small to be competing against a 244 pound heavyweight like Wladimir. If Chambers was fighting in the 70s with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman, he’d be alright. But he’s facing the wrong kind of heavyweight without the size to put him on an even playing field.

Wladimir needs to win this fight in an impressive manner if he wants to build up attention on himself for a fight with David Haye in the future. The American public has lost their taste for watching Wladimir fight because of being burned in the past watching one too many safety first fights from him. But if Wladimir can take Chambers out with a sensational one punch knockout, boxing fans will forget about Wladimir’s past disappointing fights and start looking forward towards a bout between him and Haye.

Wladimir is going to have to show some urgency against Chambers and not play it safe. Given the huge size advantage that Klitschko will have in his fight with Chambers, it’s going to look really bad if Wladimir treats him like a knockout threat and backs away from him and clinches all night long like he’s sometimes down in the past against weak opponents.

6 Responses to “Klitschko-Chambers: Wladimir badly needs an impressive knockout win”