Sillakh to fight 39-year-old Pylypenko on August 19th

By Boxing News - 08/15/2012 - Comments

Image: Sillakh to fight 39-year-old Pylypenko on August 19thBy Allan Fox: #7 WBC light heavyweight contender Ismayl Sillakh (17-1, 14 KO’s) will be stepping up a weight class on August 19th to fight 39-year-old Ukrainian journeyman Igor Pylypenko (3-12-2) in a 10 round scheduled fight at the Club Sportlife, in Kiev, Ukraine.

This is a huge step down in terms of competition for the 27-year-old Sillakh, who was blasted out in the 8th round in his last fight against the hard hitting Russian Denis Grachev last April in a shocking upset loss. Sillakh was well ahead in the fight in the 8th when he got badly hurt by a big right hand and then quickly finished off.

It wasn’t necessarily a lucky shot, however, because Grachev was putting a ton of pressure on Sillakh and was tiring him out with his pursuit.

Sillakh is going to have problems if he decides to stay at cruiserweight because he’s not a huge puncher, and his chin is fragile as we saw in the Grachev bout. He’d have to really fix his defense if he wants to stay at this weight and not suffer additional knockouts in the future.

According to fightnews.com, Sillakh has been working out at the Mayweather gym in Las Vegas, Nevada while getting ready for the journeyman Pylypenko. This isn’t supposed to be a competitive fight because Pylypenko doesn’t have much in the way of power and he’s been beaten in 11 of his last 12 fights. The fact that Sillakh is facing someone of this caliber suggests that there’s some worry there from Sillakh’s people.

Usually a fighter that was beaten takes on at least a halfway decent fighter after they suffer a loss, but this is taking it to the extremes by fighting someone this weak. It’s difficult to see what Sillakh will get from this fight because Pylypenko has been stopped on numerous occasions early in his fights in the past three years.



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