Klitschko battles Leapai next Saturday

By Boxing News - 04/19/2014 - Comments

wladimir46By Allan Fox: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (61-3, 51 KO’s) has a mandatory title defense coming up this Saturday night against his WBO mandatory Alex Leapai (30-4-3, 24 KO’s) in Germany. Wladimir is already apologetic about the fight, saying he doesn’t want to be blamed if it turns out to be a mismatch.

The people who need to be blamed is the World Boxing Organization, as they’re the ones that ordered for Leapai and Denis Boytsov to fight it out in a WBO heavyweight eliminator but to pick out a mandatory challenger for Wladimir to fight.

“I don’t like the fight because he’s [Leapai] got nothing to lose,” said Wladimir’s trainer Johnathan Banks.

Leapai, 6’0″ 244lbs, is going to fight all out in this title challenge against Wladimir because this might be Leapai’s only chance at ever getting a world title fight during his career. You’ve got to figure that it took Leapai 10 years to finally get a world title shot that his chances of getting another one are very slim unless Leapai fights for a long time and ages well. He’s 34 now, and he’s been beaten by the likes of Kevin Johnson in 2012 in a 9th round TKO.

If Leapai isn’t able to beat guys like Kevin Johnson then the chances of him fighting his way to another title aren’t good unless Leapai lucks out one of the sanctioning bodies selects another ordinary contender for Leapai to fight in another eliminator bout like they did with him and Boytsov.

“It was supposed to be Boytsov, but he lost,” Wladimir said. “Every contender is going to try and be the king of the hill.”

Wladimir’s promoters were already in contact with Boytsov’s management, as they were confident that he would beat Leapai without any probems. However, Leapai was able to use his power to beat up Boytsov and knock him down a couple of times in beating him by a 10 round decision.

Leapai won’t be able to do much in this fight if he can’t get close enough to land his shots against the 6’6″ Wladimir. Leapai will be giving up 6 inches in reach, and that’s going to be a real problem for him. Unless Leapai can land a leaping hook the way that David Tua used to throw his hooks against taller fighters, Leapai will end up getting knocked out or easily outpointed.



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