By Scott Gilfoid: After having taking a thrashing from WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson last Saturday night in Quebec, Canada, Britain’s Tony Bellew (20-2-1, 12 KO’s) has decided it’s too much trouble for him to struggle to make the 175 lb. weight division, and that he instead thinks he’ll be better off fighting as a cruiserweight.
The 6’3″ Bellew doesn’t want to take on the two champions – Marco Huck and Yoan Pablo Hernandez – first, but he intends on going after WBC cruiserweight champion Krzysztof Wlodarczyk (48-2-1, 34 KO’s) first, and if successful, to fight Huck and Hernandez in unification bouts.
Bellew was stopped in the 6th round last Saturday night by WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson. It wasn’t much of a fight unless you like one-sided affairs where a much quicker and stronger fighter is beating up on tall bean-pole for six excruciatingly one-sided rounds.
Although Bellew says this isn’t an excuse for him getting beaten badly by Stevenson, Bellew said this to the BBC “I’ve basically been on a diet for years. I can’t continue to punish my body the way I do.”
If it had been such an issue for Bellew to make weight then why in the heck was he still fighting at light heavyweight? It sounds bad when a fighter isn’t complaining when he’s winning, but as soon as he gets beaten, he starts talking about how it’s too hard on his body to make weight.
Bellew said to Boxing News “I’m looking at Krzysztof Wlodarczyk.”
If Bellew is interesting in fighting Wlodarczyk then I think he’s going to need to stay clear of contender Rakhim Chakhkiev, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist from Russia. This guy is ranked #2 by the WBC, and he gave Wlodarczyk a massive amount of problems in their fight last June in Moscow, Russia.
Wlodarczyk got the stoppage in the 8th round, but he took a real beating in that fight from Chakhkiev, and I don’t know of too many fighters that would have been able to take that kind of punishment and still remain standing.
Chakhkiev would be a very hard fight for Bellew, and I can’t see him winning that fight the way he looked last Saturday. These guys hit with big power with every punch and Bellew is so skinny and frail-looking. I don’t think he’d hold up to being nailed round after round by the likes of Chakhkiev and Wlodarczyk.
Comments are closed.