By Erik Schmidt: Once-beaten cruiserweight contender Marco Huck (20-1, 15 KOs) will be fighting Frantisek Kasanic on Saturday night in a scheduled 12-round bout at the Oberfrankenhalle, Bayreuth, in Bayern, Germany, for the vacant IBF Intercontinental cruiserweight title. Huck, only 23, was turned back in his attempt to challenge for the IBF cruiserweight title last year in December against champion Steve Cunningham. Huck started well in the first three rounds but seemed to tire badly from that point on, only rarely attacking Cunningham with any meaningful punches.
It was a particularly bad performance for Huck, in that he was made to look almost amateurish by the highly skilled Cunningham, who essentially took Huck slowly apart with nothing more than a slow jab accompanied with an occasional slower right hand. For those who had expected more from Huck in the fight, they were badly disappointed in his woeful performance against Cunningham. However, Huck appeared to have been rushed into the bout a little too fast, because he’d fought few quality cruiserweights leading up to the fight other than Vadim Tokarev, whom he beat by a 12-round majority decision.
Huck looked bad in that fight, showing few skills and appearing to lose by at least several rounds. Following that fight, he looked ill-prepared to challenge for a title against a fighter as talented as Cunningham, and I saw nothing but bad things ahead for him in that bout. As it turned out, Huck took a beating in the fight was in no way competitive with him.
After the fight, Huck’s management appeared to take Huck back to the drawing board, putting him in with a C-class opponent Leon Nzama (2-6), who Huck promptly defeated by a 5th round TKO. Even then, Huck looked as about as bad in that fight as he did against Cunningham, the only difference being that Nzama had even worse skills than Huck, and naturally folded when pressed in the fight. The choice of Nzama as Huck’s opponent seemed like a knee-jerk reaction by Huck’s management, who seemed to veer in the opposite direction far too much in trying to get his confidence back and have him learn something in the process.
The fight appeared to teach Huck nothing, because he didn’t show any new skills, instead using the same bum rush style that got him into trouble against Cunningham. This was something I had hoped they would get out of Huck’s system, but it appears to have persisted. That is, most of Huck’s offense consists of him running forward at his opponent like a football player off the line, while rapidly flailing his punches wildly in the air. It looks very erratic to say the least, and something that a skilled fighter would pick apart. This is exactly what Cunningham did in his fight with Huck, moving to the side every time Huck would run at him, and tagging him with straight rights and left hooks.
I don’t expect Huck to have made any changes to his style of fighting by Saturday night against Kasanic, because his trainers probably don’t want to mess with what got him to this point in his career. However, considering that he really hadn’t fought anyone of note other than Cunningham and Tokarev, they should feel free to start him from the ground up, and focus on his offense first and foremost.
While they’re at it, they need to work his dreadful stamina, because he seems to fade badly by the 5th round of his fights, his face turning red and his punch output dropping off significantly no matter whom he’s fighting. At 23, you wouldn’t think that he’d have problems like this since he’s still young. Obviously, they need to work on his endurance, try to get him to spar longer and work more on his cardiovascular system. I see this being a problem for him once they put him in with another top fighter, someone that Huck won’t be able to take out in the first few rounds with his usual bum rush style of fighting.
As for Huck’s opponent this Saturday, 32 year-old Kasanic. I expect Huck to win easily. Kasanic has fought exactly nobody in his career, and Huck’s management has likely done their homework and seen that he doesn’t possess much of a threat to Huck.