Klitschko vs. Peter: How long will Wladimir’s legs carry him before Samuel puts him out of his misery?

By Boxing News - 08/19/2010 - Comments

Image: Klitschko vs. Peter: How long will Wladimir's legs carry him before Samuel puts him out of his misery?By Dave Lahr: If you’ve seen the previous fight between the younger Wladimir Klitschko and Samuel Peter five years ago, you’ll notice immediately that Wladimir chose to run for 12 rounds rather than risking fate by attempting to trade shots with the more powerful Peter. And even though Wladimir ran like a jackrabbit for 12 rounds, he was still knocked down three separate times by the devastating punches from Peter. Now Wladimir is no longer a young rabbit, and has matured into a slower, more stationary fighter who has to get by with his power and his jab more than previously. On September 11th, Wladimir, with his legs now pretty much gone, will be facing a still lethal Peter in a 12 round bout with Klitschko’s two heavyweight titles, the IBF and WBO, on the line in their fight at the Commerzbank-Arenka, in Frankfurt, Germany.

There is expected to be at least 50,000 screaming German fans in attendance, rooting all the way for Klitschko in hopes that he doesn’t knocked around the ring like he did five years ago at the hands of Peter. Having seen that fight a number of times, I feel that Peter would have easily beaten Wladimir had the referee stopped Wladimir’s constant clinching and grabbing. I lost track of all the clinching that Wladimir was doing in each round, because after 10 clinches in one round, it just too much for me to count. The mind can only handle seeing so many clinches before it becomes numb and falls asleep.

I just wish the referee had done his job in that fight and penalized and disqualified Wladimir accordingly. I doubt that the disqualification really would have been necessary, because after Wladimir was penalized for the 3rd or 4th time, he would probably gotten the hint by then that he wasn’t going to be able to get away with hugging Peter all night and would have forced himself to stand and trade with Peter. In that case, I think Peter would have knocked Wladimir out in no time flat.

I think Peter is going to be ready for Wladimir when he tries his old tricks of clinching on September 11th, and will beat the stuffing out of Wladimir when he wraps Peter up like a mummy. Once Peter gives Wladimir a taste of his power by tagging him in the side of the head in the clinch, I suspect that Wladimir run, run and run to prevent Peter hitting him again. Well, when you have skinny legs like Wladimir, they tend tire out after awhile and then he has to come up with other ideas. At that point, I think Pete is going to hit Wladimir in the breadbasket with a hard right hand and then follow it up with a shot to the head that will have Wladimir staggering around the ring like a drunk. I see this going down as a replay of Wladimir’s fight against Lamon Brewster where Wladimir became ill all of a sudden after tasting a big right hand from Brewster in the 5th. Wladimir looked like a fish out of a water, flopping around on the canvas while the referee attempted to right him.



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