By Scott Gilfoid: Undefeated middleweight contender Sebastian Zbik (22-0, 8 KOs) will be facing Jamel Bahki (17-2-2, 5 KOs) in a 12-round title bout on Saturday night with Sebastin’s WBO Inter-Continental middleweight title on the line at the Gerry Weber Stadium, Halle, in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. Zbik is currently ranked #1 in the WBO, #5 in the WBA and #8 in the WBC middleweight rankings and almost certainly going to be getting a title shot against WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in early 2009. Zbik, 28, lives and fights out of Germany, and has fought most of his fights there against relatively obscure competition, almost all of which are European. However, he’s remained unbeaten and looked especially good, showing good boxing skills, if not formidable power.
It’s still hard to tell how good he is considering his low level competition he’s faced in his career, but he looks to have quite extraordinary skills in comparison to most of the other middleweights in the division, so I wouldn’t put him in the class of a hyped fighter.
Zbik is trained by Fritz Sdunek, the same trainer that Wladimir and Vitali Klitschko have used for most of their career, which is another reason to believe that Zbik is for real as a fighter. His fighting style reminds me somewhat of Darius Michalczewski the way that Zbik attacks his opponents’ body with hooks, and also the way he throws left and rights to the head. He tends to also do some of the things that Wladimir and Vitali used to do, like leaning forward with his as if to throw a right hand, but firing off a left hand instead.
He also retreats in the same manner as the Klitschko’s when attacked by an opponent, and shows good lateral movement around the ring. However, he seems to lack any real power to speak of, which may be a problem for him when he eventually faces Pavlik. I’d say he’s a better overall boxer than Pavlik and most other middleweights in the division, but his power is a glaring weakness that he’s going to have to work on fixing – that is, if he can fix it. Zbik looks good when he’s attacking his opponents, firing off shots to the midsection and head, and mixing up his punches very well.
Indeed, it’s difficult to tell precisely where Zbik will punch next and in what angle they’ll be coming in at. He does seem to have a big problem of covering up after he throws his punches, almost as if he’s inviting his opponent to punch him at free will. I’ve noticed a few other German-based fighter that tend to make this same mistake, fighters like Arthur Abraham and Marco Huck, to name just a couple. In their case, however, they do it much less often than Zbik does, instead choosing to either move away or use their torso to lean away from shots rather than just standing there and placing their gloves in front of their face.
With Zbik, he does that almost constantly. And though it’s good that he’s opting to cover up, in case something is thrown at him, it looks as if he’s just waiting there to be there, saying ‘hey, punch me.’ I’m afraid that if he goes into a bout with Pavlik, or one of the other better middleweights in the division, they’ll eat him alive if he pulls that kind of tactic. Again, there’s nothing wrong with placing your gloves in front of your face to attempt to block in coming, but it’s not alright when you stand there stationary, with both gloves blocking your face like Zbik tends to do.
Frankly, I think he’s going to get obliterated if he pulls that kind of tactic against Pavlik. That kind of thing would be like waiving a big steak in front of a hungry dog, and expect nothing to happen. Pavlik would likely punch right around Zbik’s gloves – or right through them, knocking him down fairly quickly.
I don’t expect Zbik to have many problems with Bahki on Saturday night. Bahki, 28, a fighter from Belgium, has fought entirely no one of note, and yet he’s still lost twice. Based on his paltry five knockouts, one could expect that he has little in the way of power. Clearly, Zbik’s management has selected Bahki entirely because of his average boxing skills, mediocre power and his halfway decent record. As much as this is a fight that Zbik, with his better ability, should win by knockout, I see it going to the cards. Zbik just doesn’t have any kind of power, even when he tries to sit down on his punches and he won’t have any effect on Bahki.
In Zbik’s last fight with Marco Schulze, whom he beat by a 12-round unanimous decision in April, Zbik was content to box him for the full 12-rounds and not try for a knockout. It looked bad, however, because Schultze was in no way near the same league as Zbik in terms of boxing skills, and yet Zbik didn’t have the power to get him out of there. It was an entirely one-sided fight, with Zbik hitting Schultze at will with body shots and hooks to the head, but none of them were the big kind of shots that were needed to end the fight. Believe me, if Zbik can’t take out a fighter as low quality as Schultze, I expect the same thing against an equally bad fighter like Bahki.