Maccarinelli wasting his time against McPhilbin on March 23

By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO cruiserweight champion Enzo Maccarinelli (33-5, 26 KO’s) will be moving up in weight on March 23rd to face British cruiserweight champion Shane McPhilbin (8-2, 5 KO’s) at the Civic Center, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, UK. It’s a fight where Maccarinelli gets nothing from it because McPhilbin, 26, isn’t anywhere near the same level as Maccarinelli and won’t be able to put up much of a fight before he’s knocked cold.

But what makes this a bad fight for Maccarinelli is that he’s scheduled to fight on February 25th on the Nathan Cleverly vs. Tommy Karpency card at 175. Maccarinelli, 31, will be going from 175 to close to 200 in just a little under a month and that seems like a really bad thing to do. But it doesn’t stop there.

Maccarinelli will then be dropping back down to 175 and could be facing World Boxing Organization light heavyweight champion Cleverly in the summer if Maccarinelli can get that fight. Having his weight fluctuate back and forth like that can’t be the best thing for a guy with a chin that’s been compromised four times in the past four years in knockout losses to David Haye, Ola Afolabi, Denis Lebedev and Alexander Frenkel.

The logic of facing four big punchers in a short period of time really escapes me. Just as I don’t understand why Maccarinelli would put his body through this up and down pattern of fighting at different weights. It’s like he’s planning his fights without much thought going into it. If I was Maccarinelli’s promoter, I would have never let him fight Afolabi, Lebedev or Frenkel.

I would have made sure that his chin was okay after the Haye loss by matching him carefully until I was absolutely certain he was okay. And I would definitely veto the idea of Maccarinelli fighting at 175 on February 25th and then turning around and fighting at cruiserweight less than a month later.

That’s like Maccarinelli is just begging to get knocked out. I know he can beat a guy like McPhilbin with no problem but there’s definitely a risk there that Maccarinelli could fade if he doesn’t get an early knockout and end up getting stopped himself late in the fight against McPhilbin. Just seems like a dumb move when you got a guy that’s been knocked out as many times as Maccarinelli has in a short period of time.

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