By Dave Lahr: With Eddie Chambers decisive 12-round unanimous decision victory over number #1 ranked WBO heavyweight contender, Chambers solved the last piece of the puzzle for who will be IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s WBO mandatory challenger in early 2010. Klitschko, 33, now has Alexander Povetkin ahead of him later on this year for a mandatory challenger for Wladimir’s IBF heavyweight title, and then Chambers next year.
Things couldn’t be going any better for the younger Klitschko brother. Povetkin and Chambers are good solid fighters there’s no doubt about it. However, neither of them are big punchers, the type of opponents that Wladimir has had problems against in the past.
The way things look right now, Klitschko has an excellent chance of holding onto his two titles for a little while longer, at least until late in 2010 when he has to make another decision about who his non-mandatory title defense will be against. It’s never a good idea to count your victories before they’ve occurred, and I’m certain that Wladimir isn’t overlooking either Chambers or Povetkin.
However, both are on the small size, with Povetkin only 6’2” 229 and Chambers 6’1” 205 respectively. As we saw with Wladimir’s recent 9th round stoppage victory over 6’1’ Ruslan Chagaev on June 20th, it will probably take an opponent at least 6’3” or bigger to beat Wladimir at this point in his career.
While it’s true that Klitschko’s last defeat was by the 6’2” Lamon Brewster in April 2004, that was a long time ago and Wladimir’s style of fighting has changed dramatically since that time.
A rematch against Brewster in July 2007, showed that Klitschko is now very hard to beat now that his fighting style has been changed since he started being trained by Emanuel Steward. I would give Chambers and Povetkin a good chance of beating Wladimir if this fight had taken place five or more years ago, before he started using his jab and grab technique.
However, the fact of the matter is Klitschko doesn’t try to slug it out with his opponents like he did back then and doesn’t give them much of a chance at landing their shots because of his tendency to focus more on his jabs to get the job done. Wladimir used to wear down at times in his fights, for example, in his 11th round TKO loss to Ross Purity in 1998. But that is a very different fighter from what Wladimir is now.
Wladimir doesn’t try to overwhelm his opponents anymore and doesn’t throw a lot of right hands like he used. Wladimir had problems getting countered after throwing right hands in the past, but nowadays, he doesn’t throw more than a small handful every fight and forces his opponents to create their own openings by coming forward.
This puts Wladimir in the driver’s seat because he can take advantage of his opponents’ mistakes and make them pay for it. Chambers and Povetkin, if they’re to have any chance at all, will have to try and put a lot of pressure on Wladimir to get the win. This means that both Chambers and Povetkin will have to take a lot of punishment like Chagaev did as they come forward trying to get to Wladimir. I think they’ll have problems getting near enough to Wladimir to cause him any real problems.
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