By Erik Schmidt: Newly crowned WBO super middleweight champion Denis Inkin (34-0, 24 KOs) will be making his first defense of his title on January 10th against his number #1 contender Karoly Balzsay (19-0, 14 KOs) in a 12-round bout at the Bordelandhalle, Magdeburg, in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. Both fighters are unbeaten, transplants to Germany from other countries and former amateur stars. Inkin, 30, recently won the World Boxing Organization in a controversial fashion with a 12-round unanimous decision over Fulgencio Zuniga in September in Hamburg, Germany.
Balzsay, 29, a talented two-time Olympian southpaw from Hungary, will be hoping to take Inkin’s title away from him. Balzsay, more of a technically oriented fighter with sound defensive skills and great footwork, has sneaky power.
He’s usually content with jabbing and landing straight left hands against his opponents, but occasionally, he throws short, quick combinations with a lot of power, which is often how he scores his knockouts. His straight left and right hook by themselves, usually aren’t powerful enough to put his opponents in any kind of trouble, but when he lets fly his combinations, then look out.
In his last fight in July against Jose Alberto Clavero, Balzsay stopped him with a quick left-right combination to the head that put Clavero down on a delayed reaction. It looked at first as if Clavero was faking because he went down a second after being hit by Balzsay. However, as soon as Clavero got to his feet, he staggered around the ring, showing how hurt he was.
The fight was immediately stopped by the referee upon seeing Clavero unable to walk without staggering. In the fight before that one against Mantas Tarvydas in April, Balzsay used an excellent jab and straight left hand to dominate the entire fight, jabbing Tarvydas constantly and winning the first nine rounds easily.
In the first minute of the 10th, Balzsay suddenly let loose with a perfect right-left combination to the head of Tarvydas, sending him down on the canvas. After he got up, Balzsay landed a steady stream of combinations, beating him around the ring and sending him down for the second time with another right-left combination. Following the second knockdown, the referee stepped in and halted the fight.
Inkin, from Novosibirsk, Russia and now living in Hamburg, Germany, was much less impressive in his last fight, getting outworked by Colombian Fulgencio Zuniga in September. Though Inkin got the win, it appeared to be a case of him getting a hometown decision.
If I were to be generous to Inkin, I’d give him one round in the fight, the first, but after that, he clearly seemed to lose all the remaining 11 rounds of the fight. Inkin was only able to manage an occasional right hand mixed in with his steady jab.
However, Zuniga, a fighter with a tremendous work rate, rained punches down on Inkin all night long, hitting him almost nonstop with power shots. It was an especially brutal beating, as Inkin got hit with constant right hands and resembled little more than a punching bag, giving the German crowd little to cheer about.
For this reason, it was so shocking that Inkin was handed the decision at the end of the fight. In all honesty, he deserved one round if you were being generous, but, really, I saw him winning no rounds and losing the entire fight.
With both fighters fighting for Germany, it’s up in the air who will emerge the winner in this fight. From what I’ve seen of Balzsay, he looks to be the better fighter with the better power, but it up’s to the judges who they like better. Hopefully, they get the decision right this time.
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