By Nick Adams: Former 2004 heavyweight Olympic Gold medalist for the Cuban National team Odlanier Solis (8-0, 5 KOs) won an easy 10-round unanimous decision over American Cisse Salif (22-10-2, 20 KOs) on Friday night at the Zenith – Die Kulturhalle, in Munich, Bayern, Germany. Solis, 27, won every round of the fight quite easily, though he looked almost diminutive compared to the 6’4″ 265 lb. Salif, who took Solis’ best shots with relative ease. This was perhaps the only negative for Solis, in that he doesn’t appear to have the size to compete against the bigger heavyweights like Wladimir Klitschko and some of the other big heavyweights.
At 6’0″ 246 lb. Solis is both short and round, and with his recent weight loss of close to 1o lbs, he seems weaker than before. His style somewhat reminds me of a cross between Monte Barrett and a weak version of Lamon Brewster. I suppose that’s a compliment, for both of those fighters are good, but I still see Solis as nothing but a gate keeper as long as he stays in the heavyweight division. He badly needs to trim off the 40+ pounds of fat that he’s piled on since turning professional and defecting from Cuba to Germany.
In rounds one through four, Solis mostly jabbed at the huge Salif, and occasionally would attack him with brief combinations to the head and body. The punches, however, had no effect on Salif, who absorbed them without any problem and would immediately fire back with weak jabs. Despite being a huge fighter, Salif can’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag nor can he jab for that matter. He can, however, take a good punch, not that Solis was landing any, mind you. In the fourth round, Solis had his best round up to that point, as he trapped Salif against the ropes and unloaded with a flurry of punches. Salif looked almost bored during the whole attack, and simply waited for Solis to stop punching before getting off the ropes and plodding slowly after him. It looked like a cruiserweight against a heavyweight, even though Solis weighs almost the same as Salif. Most of his weight, though, is around his thick midsection, which is coated with fat since moving from Cuba.
In rounds five though ten, the pace of the bout slowed considerably as Solis seemed to tire slightly. He still would attack occasionally, but I think he realized that he didn’t have the kind of power to take Salif out, and instead opted to conserve his strength and focus on winning by a decision. It was a wise move because Solis wouldn’t have achieve much by going after a knockout other than punching himself out and letting Salif into the fight. The last couple of rounds were especially dull due to Solis doing little other than throwing jabs, and Salif fighting in a slow, methodical manner like a sparring parter.
In the end, Solis was a class better than Salif, and was simply to good for him. However, as I mentioned previously, Solis looks to be in the same category as Brewster and Barrett (good B-level fighters), but not much better than that. He’d be better served to try and take off weight and move down to cruiserweight. However, with the amount of fat that he’s put since turning pro, it’s now doubtful he could ever do that without dramatically weakening himself in the process, and thus spoiling his chances of being a good cruiserweight contender. As it is, he’s not an impressive fighter as a heavyweight and should consider highly reducing weight.