By William MacKay: Former WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev (48-1, 34 KOs) will be looking to avenge his only defeat on his record when he goes up against undefeated WBA heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev (24-0-1, 17 KOs) on July 5th, at the Gerry Weber Statdium, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Valuev and Chagaev were previously scheduled to fight on May 31st, but Chagaev was struck ill with a nasty viral infection involving his upper respiratory tract.
Valuev, 34, lost his title to Chagaev in a closely contested majority decision loss in April 2007, a bout in which Chagaev hardly proved himself to have done enough to have taken the title from the 7’0” 320 lb Valuev. There had been hopes immediately after that fight that Chagaev would give Valuev an immediate rematch, giving him a shot at regaining his title. However, Chagaev instead opted to take an easy fight against British heavyweight Matt Skelton, whom he beat by a dull 12-round unanimous decision victory in January. Previous to that, Chagaev had hoped to meet up with then WBO heavyweight champion Sultan Ibragimov in what would have been a unification bout scheduled for October 13th, in Moscow, Russia, but that fight fell through when Chagaev again became ill and had to cancel the fight.
Chagaev looked poor in his only title defense against Skelton, fighting in short spurts, Chagaev spent much of the time wrestling around with Skelton on the inside, where he was only occasionally able to land short combinations. With this latest cancellation of his title defense against Valuev in May, there was a cry for Chagaev’s title belt to be stripped, in order to find a new heavyweight champion that would be healthy enough to defend the title on a regular basis. As it is, Chagaev has been a disappointment as the WBA champion, to be gently.
In his last five bouts, Chagaev has had close calls in three of them, with two majority decisions wins against Vladimir Virchis in March 2006, and his win over Valuev in 2007, and then a split decision win over John Ruiz in November 2006. In the bouts against Virchis and Valuev, Chagaev appeared to lose the fight, and in his fight with Ruiz, the fight appeared to be a draw. No doubt, luck, or whatever you want to call it, has been on Chagaev’s side in the past two years. Whether that luck will continue to hold out in his upcoming title defense against Valuev in July, remains to be seen.
To some people, they wonder speculate whether Chagaev will make it into the ring at all, let along make it all the way to the fight and beat Valuev. With all the time off that Chagaev has had in the past year while nursing his illness’, it will be interesting to observe how well he can perform against Valuev come fight time. In their previous fight, Chagaev had trying time trying to land anything period, other than his many shots to the gloves and chest of Valuev.
Many of Chagaev’s shots landed harmlessly to the gloves of Valuev, although because he was seen pressing the fight often, I suppose this was the rationale for Chagaev having won the fight. However, it was Valuev who landed substantially more punches in comparison to Chagaev. The end result, however, wasn’t all that surprising because the German crowd appeared to be backing Chagaev for the entire fight, cheering every punch thrown, whether it landed or not. It seemed to me that the judges would, naturally, fall into line with the fans, despite the fact that Valuev was the one that landed the more numerous punches in the fight.
Since that fight, Valuev has fought twice, beating Canadian Jean Francois Bergeron by a lopsided 12-round unanimous decision in September 2007, and then recently defeating former WBO heavyweight champion Serguei Lyakhovich by an equally one-sided bout 12-round unanimous decision in February 2007.
The bout against Bergeron was interesting, in that in spite of the fact that Valuev, the home town fighter, was fighting in Germany, it was Bergeron that received most of the cheers from the fans. I can’t precisely figure out why, but it seems as if the German crowds have failed to fully adopt the Russian Valuev, even though he’s better than the current home grown heavyweights in Germany.