By Scott Gilfoid: #6 WBC Tony Bellew (26-2-1, 16 KOs) is the clear underdog in his fight against #1 WBC Ilunga Makabu (19-1, 18 KOs) for their fight this Sunday night for the vacant WBC cruiserweight title, but that’s not stopping him from talking like he’s the favorite for their fight the Goodison Park Stadium in Liverpool, UK.
Bellew, 6’2”, says he’s not only bigger than the 5’11” Makabu, but also stronger and faster. Bellew expects Makabu to come in lighter for this fight than he usually does, and he thinks that will be a mistake because he won’t have the frame to compete with him.
“I don’t believe he has the size and structure to do it,” said Bellew to skysports.com. “He’s going to come in light which will be a bad mistake.”
Makabu is usually shorter than his opponents, so that’s not really a big deal in his fights. His lack of size isn’t going to be something that he hasn’t deal with before. Bellew’s last defeat came against the 5’11” Adonis Stevenson, who is the exact same height as Makabu.
Stevenson easily minimized Bellew’s height and reach advantage and knocked him around the ring until stopping him in the 6th round. That fight wasn’t even competitive due to the punching power and hand speed from Stevenson.
“The advantages he usually has are through speed and power – he’s normally faster than his opponents and punches harder than them too. In this fight, I don’t think he’ll have those against me. I’ve carried my speed from light-heavyweight to cruiserweight, and I don’t think he’s got more power than me,” said Bellew.
Even if Bellew were to punch harder than Makabu, which I don’t believe he does, I still see Bellew struggling badly and losing. It’s not just the power of Bellew’s problems that limits what he can do in the sport. It’s his ability to take punishment in return. He doesn’t seem to have a good chin.
Stevenson had him badly hurt and breaking down from the early rounds. Ovill McKenzie had Bellew on the canvas. Valery Brudov had hurt. Heck, even Mateusz Masternak stunned Bellew as well.
“I’ll be the bigger man, I’ll make it show and I am the real cruiserweight. Look at when I am stood next to Johnny Nelson – we’re the same size, and Johnny Nelson was known as one of the monster cruiserweights, well so am I,” said Bellew.
I still remember Bellew blabbing about how Stevenson was small as well, and how he was going to take away his physical tools. We saw how that one worked out for Bellew. He was wilting from the word go in that fight if you want to call it that.
The way I see this fight, Bellew is probably going to be running all over the place as soon as the contest starts. He used to have an interesting fighting style when he was in the 175lb division, but since he moved up to cruiserweight and was almost knocked out by Brudov, Bellew has turned into an incredibly boring fighter.
Bellew is now more of a safety first type of fighter except when he’s fighting 3rd tier opposition, which sadly is something we’ve been seeing way too much of with him. Of Bellew’s fights at cruiserweight, he’s only fought one halfway decent fighter in Masternak. The rest of them have been either light heavyweights like Nathan Cleverly or mediocre cruiserweights.