By Jason Kim: With 41-year-old Giacobbe Fragomeni sustaining an injury in training, WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (31-1, 23 KO’s) will be fighting substitute opponent #10 ranked WBO contender Ran Nakash (25-0, 18 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Gerry Weber Stadium in Halle, Germany.
This isn’t a very popular pick nor are Huck’s management doing him any favors by putting him in with someone other than Denis Lebedev, who Huck won a controversial 12 round decision win over in December.
Huck appeared to lose that fight in the minds of many fans and instead of giving Lebedev a rematch on neutral territory with a different set of judges, Huck and his team have moved on and will be fighting the 32-year-old Nakash from Israel.
Nakash has an unblemished record, to be sure. However, you’d be hard-pressed to recognize any of the fighters that Nakash has beaten because almost the whole lot of them are obscure opponents that even hardcore boxing fans would have difficulty recognizing. But Nakash does have the unbeaten record and the #10 ranking, so Huck and his team has decided to fight him rather than Lebedev or some of the top contenders in the cruiserweight division like Alexander Frenkel, Lateef Kayode, BJ Flores or Ola Afolabi.
Huck, 26, has defended his WBO title five times against the likes of Afolabi, Adam Richards, Matt Godfrey, Brian Minto and the questionable win over Lebedev. Boxing fans want to see Huck fight Lebedev again, but it doesn’t look like that rematch will be happening anytime soon.
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