By Jason Kim: World Boxing Organization (WBO) cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (29-1, 22 KO’s) will be defending his title tonight against number #8 ranked WBC contender Matt Godfrey (20-1, 10 KO’s) at the Messehalle, Erfurt, Thüringen, Germany. Huck, 25, will be fighting at home and will have the crowd firmly on his side in this bout. Besides that, Huck is the much bigger puncher and will be a constant knockout threat to the 29-year-old Godfrey, who has shown in the past to be vulnerable when facing big punchers similar top Huck.

Unfortunately for Godfrey, he’s never faced anyone nearly as good a puncher as Huck. To be sure, Godfrey has been in with some decent fighters like Rodolf Kraj and Emmanuel Nwodo that could punch hard in the early going, but none that has the ability to carry their power late into the fight like Huck. Given that Godfrey doesn’t move a whole lot in his fights, he’s going to have to depend on using a lot of upper body movement to try and twist and turn away from shots all night. Godfrey is good at making fighters miss and somewhat reminds me of a younger version of James Toney at times.

However, Huck will be attacking Godfrey constantly with his huge shots and it doesn’t take Huck a lot of punches to take out his opponents. One good solid shot is often all that it requires for Huck to end matters. The worst thing that can happen to Godfrey is for him to get hurt early on and find himself unable to defend himself while Huck flurries on him with massive power shots while the large German crowd urges him on.

Godfrey struggled in his last fight a year ago against 36-year-old Michael Simms, who put Godfrey down in the 1st round and continued to give him problems for 10 rounds. Godfrey won the fight by a 10 round split decision but he was hit a lot in that fight by aging fighter. Simms isn’t nearly the puncher that Huck is, but he was able to give Godfrey all kinds of problems just by staying busy and constantly landing shots. If Godfrey fights the same way against Huck, I can’t see this fight lasting more than six rounds at best. Huck punches too hard and will have Godfrey’s face looking like a mess if he’s able to land as much as Simms did.

The problem that Godfrey has in this fight is that he doesn’t have the power to keep Huck off of him. Without power to make Huck respect him, Godfrey is going to be facing one long tidal wave after another tonight and he’s going to be getting hit with some massive shots. If he were a little lighter around the middle, Godfrey might want to use his legs to try and run from Huck as long as he can to try take the German based fighter deep. But that won’t really serve any purpose because Godfrey would just end up losing all those rounds and then wouldn’t have the power to take Huck out late like Steve Cunningham did in his 12thround knockout victory over Huck in 2007.