Wladimir’s performance against Jennings leaves a lot of doubt about his future

By Boxing News - 04/26/2015 - Comments

wladimir455By Jim Dower: Fighting in front of 17,056 fans, IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (64-3, 53 KOs) got the job done in beating challenger Bryant Jennings (19-1, 10 KOs) on Saturday night by a 12 round unanimous decision to retain his WBC title at Madison Square Garden.

But the performance from Wladimir wasn’t a good one by any means, and there is no a lot of doubts whether he has enough left to get past his likely next opponent Tyson Fury.

To be sure, Wladimir has enough talent to beat most of the heavyweight contenders in the division just based on his jab alone, but he’s going to need more than that to beat the likes of Fury and some of the other contenders.

The scores were 116-111, 116-111 and 118-109. Wladimir was penalized a point for holding in the 10th, and he seemed unable to fight without clinching frequently to stop Jennings from getting the better of him on the inside. Wladimir was not at all comfortable when Jennings got on the inside against him.

Wladimir won the fight based on his size, jab and movement. He was able to keep Jennings from getting in range to land his shots by using movement and making sure that Jennings was rarely close enough to connect with anything. When Jennings did get close, Wladimir would clinch him to keep him from getting his punches off.

This fight was the first one for Wladimir in the United States since his poor showing against Sultan Ibragimov in 2008. Tonight’s fight was supposed to renew the American fans’ faith in Wladimir as an appealing heavyweight, but sadly he did nothing to change the opinion of a lot of American boxing fans about him.

With Jennings doing next to nothing early in the fight, Wladimir should have been able to close out the show by putting Jennings out of his misery, but he couldn’t do it. Wladimir wasn’t throwing power punches wither either hand in the fight with any regularity.

By the 6th, Jennings began to show more confidence that he could compete against Wladimir, as he went on the attack more and more, Jennings was still not successful with his attempts at igniting his offense, but he at least was trying. It was obvious that Jennings didn’t have the same skills as Wladimir did, but he somewhat made up for his lack of skills by being busy.

Wladimir was attempting to throw right hands, but he struggled to find an opening for his shots, and that kept him from using his right enough.

Jennings came after Wladimir in the 12th resulting in Wladimir nailing him with a powerful right hand and a nice flurry of shots. Jennings appeared to be slightly hurt at one point in the round, but Wladimir couldn’t finish him off.

Wladimir may have a lot of problems attempting to win his next fight against Tyson Fury unless he shows a lot of improvement on the offensive side of his game. Wladimir will need to be able to throw a lot more punches than he did tonight for him to beat Fury, and he might be young enough to do that.



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