Klitschko vs. Chambers: Look for Wladimir to crush Eddie

By Erik Schmidt: At 6’1” 208, American heavyweight contender Eddie Chambers (35-1, 18 KO’s) would be better suited to fight at cruiserweight rather than fighting against giant heavyweights like the Klitschko brothers. On March 20th, Chambers, 27, fights would could be the best of the two Klitschko brothers when he faces IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (53-3, 47 KO’s) at the ESPRIT arena, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Wladimir is the faster of the two brothers with true one-punch power.

Wladimir doesn’t have the chin of his older brother World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, but Wladimir often doesn’t need it. His right hand, left hook power is often more than is needed to take out most of his opponents. Wladimir also has probably the best jab in the heavyweight division, and with his 6’6” height, he can easily control his opponents from the outside without getting hit.

In his last fight against former WBA heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev, Wladimir pitched a near shut out until stopping Chagaev in the 9th round. Wladimir was rarely hit at all in any of the rounds no matter how hard the 6’1” Chagaev tried. In looking at how good the previously unbeaten Chagaev (25-1, 17 KO’s) had looked in his other bouts and then seeing how easily Wladimir was able to handle him, it spoke volumes about how good Wladimir is as a fighter.

The boxing public may not like the younger Klitschko brother much because of his easily he beats his opponents, but they should be thankful that he’s still fighting because without him ruling the IBF/WBO heavyweight division, we’d like have a number of smaller heavyweights with much less skill or power trading titles back and forth with no one really dominating the division.

Chambers is almost the same size as Chagaev, but with better hand speed. Without the size needed to get in range to land, Chambers is going to have to take some serious punishment to land anything. He’ll have to be ready to walk through a hail of heavy shots for him to get anything in. can Eddie do this? I don’t know, because he didn’t look good in his toughest fight of his career against Alexander Povetkin in 2008.

Chambers was outworked after the 4th round and ended up getting beaten up and losing a 12 round decision to the former Olympic Gold Medalist for Russia. Chambers was able to beat Samuel Peter and Alexander Dimitrenko last year by decision, but he didn’t look dominating in either fight.

Dimitrenko showed that he could give Chambers problems when he was using his head and fighting Chambers on the outside. But Dimitrenko fought foolishly in the 2nd half of the fight when he let Chambers inside and tried to fight it out with him at close range. It was a bad mistake on Dimitrenko’s part and he paid for it by losing the fight.

In the win over Peter, Chambers barely defeated Peter, who came into the fight at a career high of 265. That fight showed the limitations of Chambers, as he looked too small when Peter was letting his hands go and attacking. On March 20th, Chambers’ lack of size will probably be an even bigger problem for him against the much bigger Wladimir.

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