Unbeaten heavyweight contenders American Eddie Chambers (30-0, 16 KOs) and Russian Alexander Povetkin (14-0, 11 KOs) meet on January 26th in Berlin, Germany, in the final International Boxing Federation elimination bout with the winner to face IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. The bout will be shown on HBO, a rarity for European bouts because most aren’t shown in the United States.
Povetkin, 28, is the 2004 gold medal winner in the Super heavyweight class, and is being rushed quickly by his management in hopes that he’ll win a world title. He’s already faced ring veterans Larry Donald and Chris Byrd, beating both in recent bouts. However, Povetkin struggled at times with Byrd, taking a lot of punches in the process of wearing Byrd out and eventually stopping him by TKO in the 11th round on October 27th in Germany. It wasn’t a good sign for Povetkin should he eventually wind up standing across the ring from Wladimir Klitschko, who easily handled Byrd twice in his career.
Though Povetkin is still considered the best prospect in the heavyweight division, he doesn’t appear to be in Klitschko’s class at this stage in his career. Povetkin does, however, look to be good enough perhaps to beat the rest of the heavyweight champions, Oleg Maskaev, Samuel Peter, Ruslan Chaev and Sultan Ibragimov, but not by much. Povetkin needs to work on his power and defense because both are limiting factors for him as he steps up in class. His size and combinations should carry him through to a win over Chambers, a fighter with a fighting style not unlike Byrd. However, I figure the bout to be close, because Chambers does everything that Byrd does, only better.
Chambers, for his part, had a tough time beating Calvin Brock, winning a split decision on November 2nd. Chambers did little to distinguish himself in the bout, and spent good portions of each round doing little until the last minute of the round. This is one of the criticisms of Chambers, who tends to be a little on the lazy side and rarely fights the entire three minutes of a round. He prefers pot shotting in the first two minutes and then throwing flurries to pull out the round in the last minutes. This may not work against Povetkin, who puts in a workman like effort during every second of the fight, constantly unloading combinations. He’ll not likely allow Chambers to have his long rest periods like other fighters have done, and it will be interesting to see how Chambers responds to the pressure. He won’t be able to run and pot shot his way to victory, not in Germany, because the fans will be clearly backing their adopted Russian fighter.