Deal close for Wladimir Klitschko vs. 39-year-old Jean Marc Mormeck fight for December

By Boxing News - 09/11/2011 - Comments

Image: Deal close for Wladimir Klitschko vs. 39-year-old Jean Marc Mormeck fight for DecemberBy Jason Kim: A deal for a fight between IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (56-3, 49 KO’s) and 39-year-old former WBA/WBC World cruiserweight champion Jean Marc Mormeck (36-4, 22 KO’s) is reportedly close for a bout that will be taking in December according to news from Dan Rafael.

Hopefully, Wladimir decides not to take this fight, as the 5’11” Mormeck is a fringe contender at best and that’s really stretching it. Mormeck went life and death with Fres Oquendo and Timur Ibragimov in his last two fights in France, winning controversial decisions in both fights. I saw the bouts and had Mormeck losing both fights.

Mormeck also struggled badly to beat 2nd tier heavyweight Vinny Maddalone in 2009. The fact of the matter is Mormeck is old, very small for a cruiserweight and really out of depth at this weight class. He’s much better off fighting at cruiserweight, but it looks like he’s interested in the heavyweight money. Wladimir can certainly do much, much better than this, even if he were to dip down to fight other fringe contenders.

Mormeck simply hasn’t done anything for the last four years to deserve a shot at a title. In 2007, Mormeck was stopped by David Haye in a 7th round TKO loss. Mormeck lost his WBA/WBC titles in that defeat. He then didn’t fight for two years until moving up to the heavyweight division in 2009, and struggled to beat Maddalone, a journeyman.

Following that fight, Mormeck picked up a gift decision against Oquendo in May 2010 in Mormeck’s home country of France. In his last fight in December 2010, Mormeck won another controversial decision this time against Ibragimov, beating him by a 12 round split decision in France.

If Wladimir is going to pick out easy opposition to fight, he should at least take on someone that has a remote chance of making it interesting and preferably someone that actually resembles a heavyweight in size. The short 5’11” Mormeck looks to be closer to 5’9″ than his listed height of 5’11”, and is just too far past his prime for this fight to be an interesting option. I’m much rather see Wladimir take on heavyweights like Alexander Ustinov, Kubrat Pulev, Chris Arreola or Alexander Dimitrenko if Wladimir is interested in fighting fringe heavyweight contenders.

Wladimir just finished facing a former cruiserweight champion in David Haye in his last fight in July. It’s time to move back up to fighting actual heavyweights, not pumped up guys that have ate their way to the division. Mormeck looks slightly fat at heavyweight, and no longer young. It’s a sickening mismatch and one that I can’t imagine HBO or Showtime would be interested in televising in the United States. Mormeck is like a smaller, much poorer version of Tomasz Adamek, but without the ability to move like Adamek. In other words, he’s a sitting duck for Wladimir. What a waste of time.



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