Povetkin and Huck – An out of shape paper champion against a one-armed rabbit puncher

By Boxing News - 02/28/2012 - Comments

Image: Povetkin and Huck - An out of shape paper champion against a one-armed rabbit puncherBy Scott Gilfoid: It’s hard to see what the big fuss was about with last Saturday’s fight between WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin (24-0, 16 KO’s) and cruiserweight Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s). I wasn’t impressed by either fighter and saw it was a case of a couple of limited guys fighting over a paper title in Stuttgart, Germany. Povetkin won the fight by a 12 round majority decision by the scores 114-114, 116-113 and 116-112.

I’m good with the winning scores but I wasn’t pleased by the fight I saw. Povetkin looked fat like he was carrying around an extra 20 pounds of blubber on his frame. And he was totally gassed out by the 3rd round despite little in the way of shots coming from Huck during those first three rounds. It was all Povetkin at that point in the fight.

Huck just looked awful the entire fight. He’s basically just a one-armed fighter who only throws right hands that he badly telegraphs each time he throws them. His attacks were like something you’d see in a bar room rather than a boxing ring. I can’t believe that’s all his German trainers have taught the guy after eight long years as a pro. He should have learned the fundamentals by this point in his career, but he clearly hasn’t judging by what I saw last Saturday.

Huck was already exposed by Russian Denis Lebedev at cruiserweight, although they didn’t give Lebedev the decision which I’m not surprised at. But against Povetkin, Huck looked even worse, like he’d forgotten all the little he’d learned. Huck was throwing rabbit punches all night long and I lost count after the first six rounds. He was literally aiming his shots at the back of Povetkin’s head and the referee just looked like a fan more than a referee.

You might as well have given the referee a chair so he could sit and watch so he wouldn’t get in the way of fans trying to see the action. He did zero in stopping Povetkin from throwing his rabbit punches, and by the end of the night the back of Povetkin’s neck looked red from the shots that he’d been hit with. If he didn’t have any hair, I imagine the back of his head was likely reddened as well.

Huck landed far too many rabbit punches and it was just awful to look at. The only suspense for me was wondering when the referee would finally do something about Povetkin getting hit in the back of the head so often. Was it an interesting fight? Well, I guess if you’re into watching an out of shape Povetkin plodding around the ring, taking huge gasps for breath and getting tagged with rabbit punches all night long from Huck. Yeah, I guess it’s an interesting fight if you’re into that kind of thing.



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