By Eric Thomas: IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (57-3, 50 KO’s) got away with what I consider an excessive amount of clinching on Saturday night in defeating 5’11’ Jean Marc Mormeck (36-5, 22 KO’s) by a 4th round TKO at the ESPRIT arena, Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.

I’ve seen Wladimir fight before on a number of occasions and I always felt that he should have have lost points in some of fights against guys like Samuel Peter and David Haye, but I really think Wladimir needed to have points taken off for the amount of times he clinched Mormeck.

Referee Luis Pabon should have done something to keep Wladimir from gabbing the 39-year-old Mormeck so often because it got int he way of his offense completely and kept him from getting anything. Wladimir was jabbing, landing right hands and then grabbing Mormeck and leaning on him with all his weight. At one point in the 3rd round, Wladimir came in so quickly with one of his clinch attempts that he knocked Mormeck to the canvas in the process of grabbing him. And yet the referee failed to take any points away from Wladimir. I thought it was pretty sad because Mormeck kept making eye contact with the referee while being clinched, as if to let him know that Wladimir was grabbing him far too much, but the referee wouldn’t do anything about it.

In the end, it was Mormeck out there all by himself against a much bigger fighter that kept grabbing rather than letting him fight. I’m not saying that Mormeck would have won the fight because he was way out of his class here, but he at least deserved the chance to try and land some of his own shots rather than having to deal with Wladimir draping himself all over him all night long without the referee lifting a finger to save Mormeck.

This was a really ugly fight to watch largely due to the clinching from Wladimir. He didn’t need to do it because he had so many advantages and probably would have knocked Mormeck out in the 2nd round if he didn’t waste so much valuable time in clinches when eh could have been throwing punches. I can sort of understand clinching when it’s a situation where you’re fighting a big puncher and you’re tired, but to rely on it as your defense really takes away from the sport and makes it unwatchable, which is what tonight’s Wladimir-Mormeck fight ended up being.