Ustinov-Castillo, Baysangurov-Gontsa & Banks-Rossitto On This Saturday’s Klitschko Undercard

By Boxing News - 07/09/2008 - Comments

ustinov4635331.jpgBy Erik Schmidt: This Saturday’s undercard of the Wladimir Klitschko vs. Tony Thompson has a number of exciting bouts, starting with mammoth 6’7″ 300 lb undefeated heavyweight prospect Alexander Ustinov (10-0, 8 KOs) who goes up against Livin Castillo (14-5. 9 KOs), a fight that will likely see a lot of leather flying early on. Ustinov, originally from Belarus and now promoted by K2 East, is a relative newcomer to boxing after previously dabbling in Kick boxing and MMA, fighting well in both sports.

Due to his success in Kick boxing, which he seemed to excel in the boxing portions of the fights, Ustinov moved over to boxing in 2005, turning professional and quickly knocking out his first eight opponents. His fighting style is much like Vitali Klitschko, whom he has reportedly sparred with in the past on a number of occasions. Due to his size, 6’7″ and long reach, Ustinov has a tremendous advantage over most of his opponents, and is able to jab and bang them with left hooks without getting hit. His weight, age (31), and lack of mobility are areas of concern, however. He moves well for a fighter as large as he is, about as good as Vitali, but he needs to trim off more weight to make him more effective against the more mobile, more athletic heavyweights in the division like Alexander Povetkin.

Nearing 32, Ustinov doesn’t have a lot of time to continue to fight lower level opponents before making his move, because he’ll quickly find himself too old to compete successfully against the younger heavyweights if he chooses to weight too much longer. As far as power goes, he’s not a real big puncher like either of the Klitschko brothers, but he does have good power in his right hand. Mostly, though, he’s more of a fighter that wins his fights by pounding away on his opponents for a number of rounds and beating them into submission. I don’t expect his power to improve much in the future because he seems to have topped out in that department.

Undefeated EBU (European) light middleweight champion Zaurbek Baysangurov (18-0, 13 KOs) takes on Ivan Gontsa (16-1, 4 KOs), in a fight that looks as if it may have mismatch written all over it. Baysangurov, 23, a former amateur star Chechnya, Russia, is currently ranked #9 in the WBC and #10 in the WBA light middleweight division, and is on his way up in the division. He fights with a straight up European style, using a short stance in which to stalk his opponents around the ring and punish them with powerful, short punches to the head and body. He recently stopped EBU light middleweight champion Roman Dzuman in the 8th round in March, knocking him down twice in a one-sided fight.

Like most of his fights, Baysangurov fought in a totally calm manner, ignoring completely the large pro-Dzuman crowd, the fierce attacks from Dzuman, which in combination would have caused a less confident fighter to come unnerved. However, Baysangurov shut it out completely, and fought very relaxed the entire fight, hitting Dzuman with big shots to the head and body with short hooks. Baysangurov is somewhat of a crafty fighter, in particular the way that he changes up on the power of his punches and with the variety.

Indeed, he’s very hard to predict how hard he will throw a punch at any given moment or what type of punch it will be. In his fight against Dzuman, in many cases he hit him only moderately hard for a round or two, then could open up with huge shots suddenly and have Dzuman in trouble, and as quickly as that, Baysangurov would go back to hitting him with weaker shots. This left Dzuman looking to totally confused, and badly battered by the 8th round. Gontsa’s a good fighter in his own right, having fought to a draw with Dzuman in September 2007. However, he lacks the power and the size to deal with Baysangurov, who I expect to easily break him down and eventually take him out by the 9th or 10th round of the fight.

Undefeated cruiserweight contender Johnathon Banks (19-0, 14 KOs) will be facing Italian Vincenzo Rossitto (36-5-2, 22 KOs) for the vacant IBO cruiserweight title. Banks is a former three-time National Amateur champion trained by Emanuel Steward and fights out of Kronk Gym in Detroit. Ranked #1 in the WBO, Banks will likely be facing Russian Alexander Alexeev for the title in the future, a fight in which I highly doubt Banks will win. Though Banks, 26 has a lot of power, he fights pretty much wide open, attacking hard and leaving himself vulnerable to getting countered.

Already against the soft opponents that he’s been served up this far, he was closed to be stopped, getting dropped twice in the 1st round by Eliseo Castillo in July 2006. Though Banks came back to stop Castillo in the 4th round, the fight showed the type of problems that Banks has when fighting. He’ll often look good fight awhile in his fights, but then start getting nailed by right hands from his opponents.

Banks doesn’t seem to have any defense for much of what’s thrown at him, and instead uses his offense as his defense. Against a better cruiserweight like Alexeev, he’ll likely get out-boxed and eventually stopped. That said, I doubt he’ll have any problems with Rossitto on Saturday night. The Italian has been stopped every time he’s stepped up against stiff competition, getting knocked out by David Haye, Alexander Gurov and Krzysztof Wlodarczyk. Look for another knockout loss on Saturday night to Banks.