By Dan Ambrose: The March 14th fight card headlined by Sergey Kovalev vs Jean Pascal will have a heavyweight match between #6 WBC, #9 WBO, #12 WBA Vyacheslav Glazkov (19-0-1, 12 KOs) and #4 IBF, #14 WBO, #14 WBA Steve Cunningham (28-6, 13 KOs) as the co-feature bout at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
This is kind of disappointing because there was talk about a match between light heavyweight contenders Artur Beterbiev and Isaac Chilemba potentially taking place on the card, and that’s a much better fight than Cunningham-Glazkov. Beterbiev has the potential to be a future world champion at light heavyweight.
Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing about Glazkov and Cunningham in terms of their potential to win a world title at heavyweight. Those are both fringe level heavyweights at best, and I don’t see either of them having near enough talent to win a world title in the heavyweight division unless it’s one of the World Boxing Association’s heavyweight multiple titles.
The WBA has a regular champion, a super champ and interim champion. What a mess that is.
Glazkov is kind of like the new Tomasz Adamek, a fighter who lacks power and who struggles to beat the mid-level heavyweights. In 2013, Glazkov was given a gift 10 round draw against Malik Scott in a fight in which many boxing fans saw Glazkov losing.
The fact that he got a draw against Scott, a fighter that was wiped out by Deontay Wilder in one round, is troubling. It shows you that Glazkov doesn’t have the pop in his punches to fight at a high enough level at heavyweight to do much in the division.
Glazkov has since won his last five fights, one of which was a 12 round decision over Adamek in March of 2014. However, Glazkov was involved with another controversial fight shortly after that when he was given a 10 round majority decision win over journeyman Derric Rossy in August of 2014. That was a fight that many boxing fans felt that Rossy one.
Glazkov now has two controversial fights on his resume that fans think he lost, and that’s not good. What’s really not good is how poor he looked against Rossy. He should have been able to wipe Rossy out if he was a good heavyweight. The fact that he couldn’t dominate Rossy suggests that Glazkov is more of a gate keeper type of heavyweight than a threat to win a world title. The talent, speed and power just isn’t there for Glazkov.
Cunningham, 38, is getting long in the tooth and you have to wonder how much longer he’ll be able to go on with his career. He’s won his last three fights against weak opposition. However, before that, he’d lost four out of his last five bouts, including a stoppage loss to Tyson Fury.
Cunningham did beat 42-year-old Amir Mansour by a 10 round decision last year in April in a life and death fight, but we’re talking about a guy that is another fringe level fighter. Cunningham was nothing special in that fight, and he’s lucky he won it.
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