By Jason Kim: Former WBA/WBC cruiserweight champion Jean-Marc Mormeck (36-5, 22 Ko’s) will be moving back down to cruiserweight on February 9th to challenge WBC champion Krzysztof Włodarczyk (47-2, 33 KOs) at the Equatorial Guinea in a large soccer stadium. The 40-year-old Mormeck just finished fighting IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in a losing effort last March.
Mormeck, 5’11” was much too small for the 6’6” Ukrainian and he ended up getting stopped in the 4th round. The money had to have been really good for Mormeck, and it’s unclear whether he’d have made the same kind of money had he stuck it out at cruiserweight during the last three years. Mormeck moved up in weight from cruiserweight after losing his WBA/WBC titles to David Haye in November 2007.
Mormeck then won three fights at heavyweight and was hand-picked by Wladimir to fight him in Germany. You can make a pretty good argument that Mormeck didn’t deserve to fight for a world title against Wladimir, but it was a selection that appeared to have been done mainly because of Mormeck’s name recognition among casual boxing fans in addition to Mormeck’s popularity in his home country of France.
Włodarczyk, 31, will be making his fifth defense of his World Boxing Council title. He’s not faced anyone that you could call since picking up the title in 2010. Włodarczyk has beaten Jason Robinson, Francisco Palacios (twice) and Danny Green. Those are decent fighters, but not really good fighters. Green was good, but he’s gotten older recently and he was coming off of surgery when he fought Włodarczyk and it showed in his poor performance.
If Mormeck was a little younger, I’d give him a pretty good chance to defeat Włodarczyk. However, Mormeck hasn’t looked good in a real long time and he’s going to be getting hit a lot by Włodarczyk in this fight. It’s going to be tough for Mormeck, because Włodarczyk has a really good jab and excellent power in either hand when he loads up on his shots. Włodarczyk doesn’t throw a lot of punches, but when he does he can be a lot of trouble, especially for an older fighter like Mormeck.
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