Video: Bellew vs. Chilemba II Weigh-In

By Boxing News - 05/24/2013 - Comments

YouTube video

By Scott Gilfoid: WBC Siler light heavyweight champion Tony Bellew (19-1-1, 12 KO’s) made weight today in coming in at 174.75 pounds for his rematch against Isaac Chilemba (20-1-2, 9 KO’s) this Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Chilemba weighed in at 174.25 lbs. Both fighters look to be in excellent shape for this fight and it should be a compelling fight from start to finish.

Last time they fought in March of this year, Chilemba appeared to get the better of Bellew for the last seven rounds after getting off to a bad start in the first five rounds of the fight. Chilemba was fighting with a flu and it gave him problems with his breathing.

Bellew said to Sky Sports News “The fact that he’s talking about knocking me out is music to my ears, but the fact of the matter is when he gets touched for the first time like he did last time, he’s going to say ‘I’m going to box here because I don’t want to get knocked out.'”

It’s interesting that Bellew says that because it was him that chose to box instead of slug in the last seven rounds of the fight after Chilemba changed the course of the fight by taking it to him to him from rounds six through twelve.

Bellew backed off completely upon taking some hard head shots in the 6th round and from that point on, he had his track shoes on and didn’t want to mix it up. It was like night and day in how much Bellew changed from the first five rounds and the last seven rounds. He was playing it safe, trying not to get hit and not pushing the fight at all.

I doubt the outcome would have been any different had Bellew kept pressuring Chilemba because he was missing his shots over and over again, and getting countered. It was fruitless for Bellew to keep trying to slug because Chilemba was like Floyd Mayweather Jr. out there in making Bellew miss and forcing him to take the power off of his shots in order to land anything at all.



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