By Allan Fox: WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s) fought his heart out against WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin last Saturday night only to lose by a 12 round majority decision in Stuttgart, Germany.

The decision wasn’t a popular one with the German fans nor with a lot of boxing fans from around the globe with many of them seeing Huck as having been outright robbed of a decision. The judges scored it 114-114, 116-11 and 116-112, giving the 32-year-old Povetkin a narrow win.

To be sure, it was a close fight but it did appear that Huck had done enough to get the win. However, given the subjective nature of scoring a fight, it’s not surprising that Huck lost it because you never know what the judges are looking at when they pick winners.

Never the less, Huck is going to have to make a decision about whether to stay at heavyweight to try and get a rematch with Povetkin or a fight against the Klitschko brothers or to move back down to cruiserweight so that he can continue to defend his WBO cruiserweight title. Huck showed that he’s got the power and the ability to compete at the heavyweight level. I can see him beating most of the heavyweights in the division with the exception of the Klitschko brothers, but he definitely needs work to iron out the rough edges to his game.

At cruiserweight, Huck can probably hold onto his World Boxing Organization title for a long time as long as he doesn’t fight Denis Lebedev again. Huck probably should have lost that fight against him in December 2010. Lebedev is ranked #2 and Ola Afolabi #1 by the WBO. Those are the biggest threats to Huck, because both can really punch and Huck can be hurt and his defense is rather porous. He can dish it out and hurt guys, but he can also be hurt himself. Huck has had a fairly long break in between facing those guys, and he could be in trouble when he’s eventually forced to fight them again.

Huck took a lot of punishment against Povetkin last Saturday night, and he’s not really considered a puncher. Povetkin is more of a high volume thrower and he still did a number on him.