(Tony Bellew seen here doing a good job of taking Adonis Stevenson’s best power shots) By Scott Gilfoid: Liverpool fighter Tony Bellew (20-2-1, 12 KO’s) will be moving up in weight from the light heavyweight division to the cruiserweight division this Saturday night to face a ring rusty 37-year-old Valery Brudov (41-4, 28 KO’s) in a scheduled 12 round bout at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK. While this is technically Bellew’s first fight at cruiserweight, he’s fighting a light heavyweight for this one.
Brudov used to fight at cruiserweight, but he’s now a light heavyweight, so Bellew has picked an odd opponent for his first fight in the cruiserweight division. Brudov has fought only 5 times in the past 4 years. In other words, just a little over 1 fight a year a year. That always helps a guy when you pick out an old rusty fighter who doesn’t fight in the same weight class as you.
Bellew was stopped in the 6th round in his last fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson in November of last year. It was about as one-sided a fight as you’ll ever see at 175, but Bellew is blaming his poor performance on him having to take off a lot of weight to make the 175 lb limit. He figures that now that he’s moved up to the cruiserweight division, he’ll not have the same problems. I guess we’ll find out on Saturday night if that’s the case. I just hope Bellew doesn’t start bellyaching about how he’s having problems making weight for this division as well, because once the excuses start flying for certain fighters, they just never stop coming up with new excuses to explain why they didn’t have the talent to win a fight.
“The truth of the matter is I was a stone heavier on the night of the fight and two stone heavier a week after the fight,” Bellew said to Sky Sports. “I think I can bring something different to the division, speed and power…Brudov is an established cruiserweight so let’s see if if he is bigger than me. Let’s see if he can take what I’ve got, because in my mind he can’t.”
Actually, Brudov is a light heavyweight now, so I’m not sure what Bellew is yacking about him being an established cruiserweight. Sure, Brudov fought as a cruiserweight, but he didn’t have the frame to fight in that division, and he ran into problems each time he’d fight a big cruiserweight with power. If Bellew wants to lather up one of his opponents to make them seem better than they are, then he should at least wait until he’s fighting someone decent like Thabiso Mchunu, Rakhim Chakhkiev and Ola Afolabi before he starts smothering them with compliments and pronouncing them as being an established cruiserweight.
Bellew should win this fight just based on youth, size and activity. But I just hope a win over Brudov doesn’t go to Bellew’s head and put ideas in there that he can suddenly compete with the best contenders in the cruiserweight division because that’s probably not realistic to think this. I mean, I’m not even talking about Bellew competing against the champions like Marco Huck and Yoan Pablo Hernandez. I don’t think he’ll be able to compete against the top contenders in the division without taking loss after loss.
I see Bellew as being in the same class as Nathan Cleverly in that he doesn’t belong at cruiserweight, and is better off draining himself to fight in the light heavyweight division where the two fighters have a weight advantage over most of their opponents.
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