By Scott Gilfoid: The World Boxing Council recently ordered #1 WBC Mairis Briedis and #2 WBC Marco Huck to fight each other for the interim WBC cruiserweight title while WBC champion Tony Bellew is fighting at heavyweight against David Haye on March 4 in their fight at the O2 Arena in London, England.
The WBC has set it up to where if Bellew doesn’t choose to come back down in weight to cruiserweight, then the winner of the Briedis-Huck fight will be the new WBC cruiserweight. If Bellew, 33, does decide to come back down to cruiserweight to resume being the WBC champion, then he’ll need to face the Huck vs. Briedis (21-0, 18 KOs) winner straightaway.
There won’t be any more voluntary defenses for Bellew. In other words, Bellew will need to fight the winner of that match if he wants to keep his WBC title. My guess is Bellew will vacate his WBC title quietly without any fanfare to do it in a discrete manner as possible so few boxing fans hear about it. I don’t think Bellew wants any part of Huck (40-3-1, 27 KOs) or Briedis, because those guys have the talent to give him a second straight knockout. When I say second straight, I’m assuming that Haye is going to knock Bellew clean out on March 4th within two or three rounds at best.
Bellew will then come into the fight against the winner of the Huck-Briedis fight more or less still half-stunned from his knockout loss to Haye. The end will be quick with Bellew getting knocked out almost immediately. That’s my prediction of the future. But I do think that Bellew vacates his WBC title rather than take on one of these talented cruiserweights and suffer another knockout.
Huck vs. Briedis is expected to take place in March or April. The fight still doesn’t have a working date of yet, but they’re expected to have one scheduled shortly.
Briedis said this to RingTV.com about his fight against Huck:
“I need to train hard and do my best, like always. Huck is a dirty boxer,” said Briedis. ”I always fight clean. We will see who will win – dirty or clean fighter.”
Huck can definitely be more than a handful for his opponents. It’s difficult to predict a winner in that fight, because both guys can punch like no tomorrow. Huck, 32, is a little older than the 31-year-old Briedis, and has a lot more experience than him. However, Huck has a lot of ring wear from some hard fights during his career.
Huck has mostly dominated his opposition, but he’s had some tough fights in the past against Ola Afolabi, Denis Lebedev, Alexander Povetkin, Firat Arslan, and Krzysztof Glowacki. Those were not easy fights for Huck. He took a lot of punishment. In Huck’s last fight against Dmytro Kucher last November, he struggled to win against a guy that was throwing slow shots at him all night long. Kucher was pushing his shots for 12 rounds, but still landing a lot.
If Briedis beats Huck, it’ll be a huge accomplishment, because no one has done that since Glowacki did a number on him last year. Huck was beaten by Povetkin in 2012 and Steve Cunningham in 2007. Huck was arguably beaten by Afolabi in 2012 in a fight that was scored a 12 round draw and by Lebedev in 2010. Huck got the nod in beating Lebedev by a 12 round split decision in Germany, but a lot of boxing fans felt that Lebedev won that fight.
Huck is definitely beatable, but it takes a good fighter to do the job on him. We’ll see how good Briedis is when he gets inside the ring with him. Whoever wins that fight, I see them mopping the deck with Bellew if he chooses to hold onto his WBC title and defend it against either of them. I see Bellew losing to both of them. It doesn’t matter which of them he faces. He’ll lose. I doubt that Bellew will dare to hold onto his WBC title.
Now that the WBC has ordered Bellew to face the winner of the Huck vs. Briedis fight, his WBC cruiserweight belt is a now hot a potato for him, and I see him wanting to get rid of the title as fast as possible rather than get inside the ring with these talents to get blasted out. Bellew already got knocked out by Adonis Stevenson in 2013, and I don’t think he wants to deal with another knockout like that. Once Haye gets done with Bellew, I do not see him wanting to fight the winner of the Huck-Briedis fight four months later.
If Bellew is going to stay at cruiserweight, I don’t know where he goes. Yeah, he can get a payday fight as a challenger against champions Murat Gassiev, Lebedev, Oleksandr Usyk and Beibut Shumenov, but I can’t picture him being able to beat any of those guys. I think if Bellew is even slightly competitive against Haye, he’ll stay at heavyweight and fight two or three fodder opponents in the next year before getting a title shot given to him against IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again, Bellew and Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn will put them in with each other at heavyweight if Bellew remains in the division after the Haye fight. I don’t think it even matters if Haye wipes Bellew out. He’ll still get the fight against Joshua, because he’s popular in the UK, and because he was in the Sylvester Stallone move, ‘Creed’ in the past. Bellew is well-known to the British boxing fans, and a fight between him Joshua, as bad as it would be, will sell in the UK. It’s sort of sad, because it would be like a circus event, and not even a fair fight due to the 6’6” Joshua’s huge size advantage of the stork-like Bellew, but enough fans would want to see the fight in the UK to make it a success. That’s why I don’t see Bellew risking his hide by coming back down to cruiserweight to face the Briedis vs. Huck winner.