By William Mackay: IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (57-3, 50 KO’s) did a great job of trying to sell a badly overmatched former cruiserweight champion Jean Marc Mormeck (36-5, 22 KO’s) as a worthy opponent for him last night, even going so far as to say he’s Tyson-like despite evidence showing that he was the farthest thing from Tyson you could possibly get.

Wladimir was able to convince a lot of boxing fans that Mormeck had a chance and sure enough, he didn’t and looked even worse than he had in his three prior fights at heavyweight in losing to Wladimir by a 4th round TKO at the ESPRIT arena, in Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

This is why Wladimir should have really held back and used common sense to picture the type of outcome that you’re going to get when you pick a short 39-year-old, 5’11” fighter, who had recently been struggling against 2nd tier heavyweights, and give him a title shot. It was like something out of Rocky where a no-hoper is picked out for a fight against the champion, except in this case the no-hoper really didn’t have a hope. Mormeck hadn’t fought since December 2010, yet he was still given a title shot. I don’t know how Wladimir couldn’t picture how one-sided this fight would be and how this would result in turning off boxing fans in a major way. It just really poor matchmaking because Wladimir honestly could have selected pretty much anyone from the top 15 that would have been a better opponent than the 39-year-old Mormeck. Wladimir couldn’t have picked a worst opponent and it’s just mind boggling that he and his management couldn’t see this outcome ahead of time. I know Wladimir’s fans are just overjoyed with this mismatch, but normal boxing fans aren’t because Mormeck didn’t belong out there. You could see it from the outset. He landed only three punches in four rounds and threw like 15 punches the entire night. I put the blame squarely on Wladimir and his management’s lap for selecting this guy because they could have picked anyone else and they would have done a better job in the ring than Mormeck.

As for the fight, if you want to call it that, Wladimir knocked Mormeck to the canvas in the 2nd and 4th rounds with right hands. Mormeck stayed down after getting clocked with a three punch combination in the fourth. Wladimir hit him with a jab that badly hurt Mormeck followed by a right hand that sent him downwards and then a left hook to the head that really wasn’t needed. Mormeck got back up but the fight was halted anyway.

Much of the action had Wladimir jabbing, landing right hands and doing a whole lot of clinching. It was really excessive clinching if you ask me and the referee should have taken off four or five points for all the holding Wladimir was needlessly doing. He was holding a guy that wasn’t even trying to punch. It was weird because it was so senseless. I can understand holding onto a guy that’s landing big shots, but holding onto a tiny guy that’s throwing anything? It didn’t make sense and it made Wladimir look really bad.