By Jim Dower: Former International Boxing Federation cruiserweight champion Tomasz Adamek (40-1, 27 KO’s) is taking a risky roll of the dice by fighting huge heavyweight contender Chris Arreola (28-1, 25 KO’s) on April 24th. Adamek, 33, appears to be gambling big that a win over the 6’4” 250 pound Arreola will put him position for a title fight against one of the Klitschko brothers in the future. It’s a gamble that could work out well for Adamek if he doesn’t get knocked out. Adamek is only 6’1” 220, which is on the small side for a heavyweight contender.

And unlike former cruiserweight champion David Haye who successfully moved up to heavyweight and captured the WBA title with a win over Nikolay Valuev in November, Adamek doesn’t have a lot of power or speed going for him. Instead, as we saw in Adamek’s dull 12 round unanimous decision win over Jason Estrada on February 6th, Adamek is going to have to try and get by with his hit and run style of fighting.

Adamek doesn’t have the power he once had in the cruiserweight and light heavyweight divisions. Unfortunately for him, Adamek’s power didn’t carry over to the heavyweight division like Haye and Evander Holyfield before him. As such, Adamek is going to have to try and get by with movement and a pot shot style of fighting to beat the bigger heavyweights like Arreola and the Klitschko brothers.

It looks like Adamek is doomed to fail even before he starts. However, Adamek could squeeze out a win over the often heavy Arreola if the American heavyweight comes in overweight like he’s done in his past five fights. Arreola seems to fight at his best around 235 to 240 range. Arreola has been getting steadily bigger since win over Chazz Witherspoon in June 2008. In that fight, Arreola weighed a relatively slender 239.

Since then, Arreola has weighed steadily in the mid-250s, and in his last fight in December, Arreola weighed a shocking 263. Still, the weight hasn’t hurt Arreola all that much as he’s continued to pile up knockouts, with the exception of his 10th round stoppage loss to WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in September 2009.

In that case, it wouldn’t have mattered much what weight Arreola came in at, he was going to lose to Vitali no matter what. Klitschko was just a much bigger and superior fighter than Arreola on that night, period. The same would likely hold true for the smallish Adamek if he ever gets a title shot against Vitali or his younger brother IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko.

Adamek doesn’t have the power, hand speed or the size to compete with the Klitschko brothers, but he might be able to beat a fighter like Arreola if he can continue to use his hit and run style of fighting that he employed against Estrada. It’s ugly to watch, to be sure, but it worked somewhat well against Estrada during most of the rounds.

Late in the fight, though, Estrada had Adamek on the run when he started finding him with right hands. We might be seeing a lot of running from Adamek in a fight against Arreola, because Tomasz simply doesn’t have the size or the power to stand up to Arreola without taking a terrible beating. I have no doubts that Adamek might be able to stand up to Arreola’s shots for awhile, but I’m less certain that Adamek’s face could hold up to the kind of punishment that Arreola would be dishing out.

Adamek’s face tends to puff up and cut easily in some of his fights at light heavyweight. If smaller fighters like Paul Briggs and Chad Dawson were able to make a mess of Adamek’s face, you can only guess how badly Arreola would mark it up. Adamek can win the fight, but he’s going to have to run for the entire fight and pick his spots to land pot shots. Arreola has enough power to stun Adamek at a moment’s notice, so it’s best to avoid exchanges with Arreola at all costs.