By Erik Schmidt: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Manuel Charr (11-0, 5 KOs) defeated former Nigerian 2004 heavyweight Olympian Gbenga Oloukun (16-1, 10 KOs) by a 7th round TKO on Saturday night at the Konig Palast, in Krefield, Nordhein-Westfalen, Germany. Charr, 24, hit Oloukun with a hard left to the midsection in the 7th, causing Oloukun to back away several steps and crouch down in pain. Referee Oliver Brien then counted Oloukun out at 1:29 of the 7th before he could make it to his feet.
Charr, formerly from Lebanon and now living in Hamburg, Germany, is a project that his German promoters hope will someday strike Gold for them. As of now, Charr looks very average and beatable. Oloukun, 25, easily won the first four rounds on my scorecard, mainly because Charr has little power, poor movement, terrible hand speed, not much of a jab and mediocre boxing skills.
However, Charr’s team studied Oloukun well and had to know that he didn’t have much ability to fight beyond the 4th round without gasping for breath and laboring badly. This is exactly what happened against Charr. After the 4th, it was all Oloukun could do to muster up a few jabs – even that had him sweating and looking as if he were able to keel over.
Of course, Charr wasn’t going to wait until Oloukun found some energy to fight, so he took advantage of the situation and started throwing short, slow jabs and power shots. Although 6’3”, Charr has little reach to speak of and needed to get really close to land his slow punches.
Charr mostly jabbed in the 5th, and looked as if he were still cautious that Oloukun might have some life left in him. However, in the 6th round, Charr finally seemed to understand that Oloukun was on shut down for the night and not capable of throwing anything more than a few harmless jabs.
Charr stayed cautious of Oloukun’s power until the end of the 6th, when Charr opened up with a flurry of shots in the last 30 seconds of the round. Oloukun took the shots but he got hit cleanly with several punches to the jaw. They weren’t hard shots, but due to Oloukun’s exhausted state, the punches had much more of an effect on him than they would otherwise have been.
In the 7th round, Charr came out looking confident for the first time in the fight and went immediately after the tired out Oloukun, hitting him with short combinations to the head repeatedly. All Oloukun could do was to back away and cover up the best he could.
Charr then waded in and got real close to Oloukun, where he then landed a flurry of punches to the head, and one left to the midsection that sent Oloukun down. The bout was then stopped after Oloukun was unable to beat the count.
It was a good victory for Charr, who kept his unbeaten record unblemished. However, it’s hard to tell how much better Charr can get. At 24, he seems to be missing in a lot of different areas in terms of power, movement and boxing skills. I suppose his German management are panning for gold with him and hoping he’ll work out some day, but I can’t see anything there.
He’s a decent local fighter, but even on the local boxing scene in Germany, I can think of at least six heavyweights that would destroy Charr if they were to be put in with him. Certainly Charr has the age factor working for him, since he’s only 24, but usually by his age you already have the building blocks of talent that’s already there.
In his case, I see a crude block of cement and I don’t know that there’s enough years in his lifetime to chip away to find a potential champion underneath. As such, his German management might be better of cutting their losses and putting their money into better prospects.