Geale v. Mundine II tomorrow in Sydney, Australia

By Boxing News - 01/29/2013 - Comments

geale3By Dan Ambrose: IBF middleweight champion Daniel Geale will be defending his title in a rematch tomorrow night against his old nemesis 38-year-old Anthony Mundine at the Entertainment Center in Sydney, Australia. Geale chose this fight rather than facing the much more dangerous WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin to fight. By choosing Mundine to fight again, it cost Geale his WBA Super World middleweight title, but then it was a bad match-up for Geale and he would have likely lost not only his WBA strap, but also his IBF title had he taken the fight.

The rematch with Mundine isn’t a match that registers with the world wide boxing public because Mundine has been out of the loop for so long that it’s not a fight that boxing fans outside of Australia really care about but the Australians like the fight and it’ll give Geale a good payday.

Four years ago, Geale was beaten by Mundine by a controversial 12 round split decision in a fight that few boxing fans really agreed with at the time. Mundine got the benefit of the doubt based on his superior power and his cleaner landing shots. It was hard to ignore his shots when they landed because he was so much stronger than the light hitting Geale. Additionally, Geale messed things up for himself by hopping around the ring this way and that way instead of standing up and actually fighting Mundine. So it’s hard to disagree with the results of the fight because the judges simply did their job and gave the decision to the guy that was making the fight and landing the cleaner shots for 12 rounds.

Things might be different tomorrow because Mundine has aged and no longer throws as many punches as he did four years ago. He’s still got good power, however, and if the two of them land the same amount of punches then I expect Mundine to come up the winner in this fight. The question is can Mundine still throw punches like he did four years ago? I doubt it. He’ll have to find some of his lost youth if he’s going to outwork Geale. He’ll also have to use his legs more because Geale will likely be hopping around the ring like he usually does and that’s going to make it tough on him to try and catch the moving target.