Kubrat Pulev with slight concussion after loss to Wladimir

By Boxing News - 11/17/2014 - Comments

pulev8By Allan Fox: #1 IBF Kubrat Pulev (20-1, 11 KO)s) took a beating last Saturday night in getting knocked down 4 times and stopped in the 5th round in his title challenge against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (62-3-, 52 KOs) at the O2 World Arena in Hamburg, Germany.

Pulev, 33, wound up with a slight concussion. With the way that Wladimir finished Pulev off with a big left hook to the head in the 5th, it looked far worse than what it actually was.

“We were at the hospital until 2.30 [A.M] There is nothing broken, the CT (computed tomography) was unremarkable. No bleeding in the brain, only a slight concussion,” said Pulev’s manager Chris Meyer to the Bild.

Pulev didn’t fight that badly. His problem was he had no defense for Wladimir’s left hooks. Pulev did a poor job defending them, and he couldn’t take the shots. He dug himself a huge hole in the 1st round when he was knocked down twice by Wladimir. In fairness to Pulev, he was actually knocked down just once in the round, because the second knockdown was a clear push. Referee Tony Weeks blew the call by counting it as a knockdown.

But more important than the bogus knockdown was the fact that Pulev couldn’t defend against Wladimir’s left hooks. This is a problem that would continue in rounds 3 and 5, as Wladimir hit Pulev with some big left hooks in those rounds.

If Pulev is going to rebuild his career then he’s going to need to learn to keep his guard up to protect his head. He doesn’t have the kind of punching power to get the better heavyweights out of there. That means Pulev is going to need to focus on his defense, because if he gets in the ring with some of the hard-hitting heavyweights like Bermane Stiverne, Dereck Chisora, or Deontay Wilder, they’d do the same thing to Pulev as Wladimir did. Tyson Fury has the size, reach and work rate to win an easy 12 round decision over Pulev if a fight between them were to ever happen.

As for Wladimir, he’s expected back into the ring in March or April of 2015. His possible opponents are the winner of the Stiverne-Wilder fight or Bryant Jennings.

“The candidates include Bryant Jennings and the winner of the fight between WBC champion Bermane Stiverne and Deontay Wilder,” Boente said via Sportbox. “This is our primary goal: to return the WBC belt to the Klitschko family.”

Wladimir will need to improve on his work rate if he wants to compete with Deontay Wilder, because Pulev was able to land a number of big shots in that fight. Wladimir couldn’t or wouldn’t pull the trigger with his punches, and his constant clinching led to him getting hit with a lot of rabbit punches.



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