By Nate Anderson: Unbeaten Irish middleweight contender John Duddy (25-0, 17 KOs) is in the process of setting up a possible fight with undefeated light middleweight prospect Ronald Hearns (20-0, 16 KOs) for a bout that would take place in January at the Madison Square Garden in New York. However, the fight is contingent on Duddy winning his next fight in November against a still unknown opponent, and Hearns winning his next two fights. Prior to this, Duddy was working on fighting IBF light welterweight champion Verno Phillips. That fight, however, reportedly fell through for lack of interest from the cable networks.
Duddy, 29, is currently ranked high in the middleweight division, coming in at number #2 in the WBO, #5 in the WBC and #9 in the IBF. Even though Duddy is almost assured of getting a title shot against one of the middleweight champions in the near future, probably Kelly Pavlik, he has moved down to the light welterweight division where his new trainer feels that Duddy would stand a better chance at competing with the smaller fighters. At 5’11”, Duddy is a medium sized middleweight, with good but not great power for his size. The problem with him, however, is that he doesn’t have really explosive power that would be needed to compete with the likes of Pavlik or Arthur Abraham.
Yet, Duddy is clearly good enough to beat most of the other middleweights in the division aside from Pavlik and Abraham, and would stand an excellent chance at picking off the WBA middleweight title if current champion Felix Sturm would give him a shot. Duddy’s trainer is correct, though, about him possibly matching up better with the light middleweights in terms of size. More than the size problem for Duddy, he badly needs to work on his leaky defense, because he tends to get hit much too often for his own good, as evidenced by the battering he took at the hands of Walid Smichet in February 2008, a fight where Duddy was cut badly over both eyes and staggered early.
Though he came back strong in the second half of the fight fighting behind his jab and strong combinations, it was a wake-up call for him showing him that he needed to work much more on his defensive liabilities. In his last fight against Charles Howe in June, Duddy seemed to show more focus on his defense, and got hit much less than he had in the past. But Duddy was still hit far too much for my liking, and still was showing his slugging tendencies by trading shots with Howe in most every round of the 10-round bout.
Hearns, 29, the son of former boxing great Tommy Hearns, has still largely fought mostly soft opposition up to this point in his career, and Duddy would present a huge leap up in competition for him. At 6’3″, Hearns is built along the same lines as his famous father, who stood slightly shorter at 6’1″, but that’s where the similarities end unfortunately. Ronald’s power doesn’t come anywhere near his fathers’, although it’s still not bad for a light middleweight. It’s hard to tell how good he really is because of the lower quality opposition he has faced.
It’ll be interesting to see if he can use his huge frame and long jab to try and control Duddy on the outside. Hearns, however, doesn’t use his jab to keep his opponents at the distance like he should, and instead he prefers to throw left hooks at short range. If he tries this with Duddy, Hearns may find himself getting hit much too by Duddy’s hard right hand and powerful jab. Duddy can be a crafty fighter when he wants to, and appears to have a clear edge in boxing skills over Hearns, who didn’t have any real amateur career to build up his skills.