By William Mackay: I was one of many writers who were surprised and downright shocked when the virtual unknown cruiserweight Ola Afolabi (14-1, 6 KOs) came out of nowhere to stop Enzo Maccarinelli (29-3, 22 KOs) in the 9th round last Saturday night. Except for a close call in the 3rd round when Afolabi slightly hurt Maccarinelli with a right hand at the end of the round, it seemed as if Enzo was easily winning the fight and had it in the bag in the 9th round. Obviously, I was dead wrong, as you could see and Maccarinelli ended up catching a wild right hand that knocked him flat.
I don’t agree with the stoppage either. Maccarinelli looked to be okay, and probably would have survived the round by clinching if the referee had at last given him a chance to continue. However, none of that matters now. The main thing is Maccarinelli, if he cares about his future, he needs to try and line up a rematch with Afolabi any way possible.
This isn’t like the knockout loss to David Haye where Maccarinelli didn’t take a lot of heat because he was facing a pure knockout artist. Afolabi is far from a big puncher, as his anemic six knockouts on his record would seem to indicate.
This loss seems to show that Maccarinelli has a problem taking punches, and he needs to change his fighting style accordingly if he’s to continue with his career. First off, if he’s serious about wanting to avenge his defeat to Afolabi, he’s going to need to get shed of his trainer Enzo Calzaghe. Frankly, he’s not the right type of trainer for him from perch.
Oh sure, his style works on his son, Joe Calzaghe, but the style seems all wrong for Maccarinelli. When he stands square to his opponents, throwing those useless little short punches, he’s just asking for trouble. The punches do nothing to help him win and only leave him open for big counter shots from his opposition.
Maccarinelli gives up his height way too easy by choosing to fight at close range as often as he does. He’s a great body puncher, don’t get me wrong, but with his weak, he can’t afford to use that style longer if he wants to continue with his career.
If he gets a rematch with Afolabi, Maccarinelli needs to start using his jab much more often. Ideally, if I was his trainer instead of Calzaghe, I would scrap all that garbage love tap punches and keep him entirely on the outside where he can use his excellent jab. It doesn’t take much energy to jab all night long and it would keep him out of range of Afolabi’s sneaky right hand bombs.
I would forget all about throwing body shots for the time being, at least until Maccarinelli’s chin gets a little better. I doubt it will, but he should find out in hard sparring sessions before the fight rather than going into the bout and thinking he can continue to fight the way he has in the past.
Along with using mainly jab to do all his offensive work, I would put him some sparring sessions Wladimir Klitschko, so that Enzo could learn how to clinch often. With his height, he needs to know how to do that to keep the shorter fighters from getting in close to him.
Afolabi, at 6’3”, obviously doesn’t count as a shorter fighter, but he mostly likes to fight at close quarters, which makes him somewhat like a shorter fighter. Instead of trading big shots with him in close, Maccarinelli needs to either clinch him or get out and back up to give himself some room.
Maccarinelli was doing a good job in controlling the fight in rounds four through eight, and he showed that he’s capable of out-boxing Afolabi when he wants to. However, he’s going to have to think boxing entirely in a rematch and forget all about trying to blast Afolabi out with power shots.
Who knows? Maybe Maccarinelli could do it if his chin holds up for 12 rounds, but given the fact that he’s now been knocked out in two of his last three fights, I wouldn’t want to bet on his chin holding up.
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