By Scott Gilfoid: #7 WBC Enzo Maccarinelli (38-7, 30 KO’s) is hoping that WBA World light heavyweight champion Jurgen Braehmer (43-2, 32 KO’s) will be a good one and give him a rematch after Maccarinelli suffered a horrific eye injury that caused his title challenge against the 35-year-old Braehmer to be halted prematurely before the start of the 6th round last night at the Stadthalle, Rostock, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany.
Maccarinelli, 33, isn’t saying that he would have beaten Braehmer if he hadn’t been injured, but he still feels the fight outcome would have been different.
For Braehmer and his promoters to give Maccarinelli a rematch, they’d have to take at the past history of Maccarinelli to decide whether it would be worth the risk of subjecting their German fans to another less than pleasant looking fight against Maccarinelli if there’s a chance that one of his eyes will start to swell up the second that Braehmer starts nailing Macc with straight left hands to the head.
Would love the opportunity to come back to Germany and go again! @SauerlandBros what do you reckon gents? #unfinishedbusiness #rematch
— Enzo Maccarinelli (@theRealEnzoMac) April 6, 2014
This isn’t the first time that Maccarinelli has suffered a swelled up right eye, though, as his eye closed up his stoppage loss to the southpaw Denis Lebedev in 2009, and it seems like his right eye is his weak spot. I don’t know if it’s worth it for Braehmer and Sauerland to waste time agreeing to give Maccarinelli a rematch if his right eye is going to close up immediately, causing another early stoppage.
Braehmer has to think about his German fans. Does he really want to subject them to another gruesome fight like the one that they saw last Saturday? If you watch the crowd, they looked very uncomfortable in watching the fight, likely due in large part to the ugly swelling of Maccarinelli’s eye. Even after the fight, the German crowd was strangely silent, because it was such a gruesome fight to watch.
“I’d like to do it again,” Maccarinelli said via BBC. “What can I do? I had one eye, he had two…He hit me flush on many occasions and I don’t think he hurt me once. Nothing bothered me power-wise, but I couldn’t see him. I really believed I could have won.”
In looking at the last two rounds again, I don’t think Maccarinelli could have won this fight even if it had continued for the full 12. Braehmer was getting the better of him constantly, and tying him up immediately before he could throw anything back. Maccarinelli’s accuracy and coordination looked poor, as he missed constantly and was moving around the ring awkwardly. Maccarinelli couldn’t place his punches in the right spots, and he wasted a lot of time trying to hit the elusive Braehmer’s head.
In just watching a couple of rounds, it seemed obvious that Maccarinelli had his best luck when he was throwing to the body. I don’t know why Maccarinelli didn’t focus all of his attention to throwing to Braehmer’s body, because he was hitting him with some tremendous shots and landing with near 100% accuracy. Maccarinelli’s trainer Gary Lockett should have seen his difficulty in trying to land head shots, and he should have told him to throw nothing but body shots.
If Maccarinelli does get a rematch against Braehmer, which I don’t think he will, he needs to get a new trainer that can focus him on throwing body shots most of the time, because he doesn’t seem to have the hand-eye coordination to throw head shots. Braehmer is too hard to hit with head shots unless you’re someone like Adonis Stevenson and/or Sergey Kovalev. Maccarinelli can probably beat Braehmer, but only if he fights out of a southpaw stance to protect his problematic right eye and only if he throws body shots.
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