Maccarinelli back with his old trainer and hoping to find success at light heavyweight

By Boxing News - 07/09/2011 - Comments

By Sean McDaniel: Former World Boxing Organization (WBO) cruiserweight champion Enzo Maccarinelli (32-5, 25 KO’s) is back with his old trainer Enzo Calzaghe and is hoping to find success at light heavyweight. Maccarinelli, 30, has been knocked out four times in the past three years and it looks like he realizes that he needed to make some changes.

By moving back with his old trainer and moving down in weight, Maccarinelli figures to be able to catch some of that magic that he lost when he started a run of bad luck in 2008 when he was stopped by David Haye. However, Maccarinelli is a big fighter at 6’4″ with a big frame and it’s going to be difficult for him to lose weight and fight at 25 pounds less than what he was routinely weighing for his cruiserweight fights.

Maccarinelli will likely have to lose muscle to make 175, and do some dehydrating to get the weight right. It doesn’t seem like something that is going to work. If anything, Maccarinelli will likely be more prone to knockouts, not less because of the loss of weight. He’s also going to find out that light heavyweights can punch about as hard as a lot of the cruiserweights. There’s not a lot of difference between the two divisions in terms of power. The real difference will be speed. Light heavyweights are faster than the cruiserweights than Maccarinelli has been facing and he’s going to have to learn to adjust to that otherwise he’ll end up like heavyweight Chris Byrd when he attempted to fight at light heavyweight. In theory, it sounds like a great idea but in reality the chances of Maccarinelli pulling this off are slim at best.

Former super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe is giving Maccarinelli a chance, saying in and interview at southwalesonline.co.uk, “He was never a big cruiserweight, he was a quite small cruiserweight…If you look at his defeats, he wasn’t getting hammered, especially in his last fight, he was winning.”

It doesn’t matter whether Maccarinelli wasn’t getting beaten up; He still was knocked out when he did get hit. I think it’s far worse for a fighter to get knocked out badly than to take some punishment.

Maccarinelli has a chance of doing well at light heavyweight but only if his trainer Enzo can change his fighting style to make him fight at a distance using his jab rather than fighting in close. However, I don’t see that. In the past, Calzaghe has had Maccarinelli giving up his fight and working in close to throw big body shots and fast combinations.

That would work if Maccarinelli had a good chin, but he doesn’t. He needs to fight on the outside the way that Wladimir Klitschko does and his jab and movement to keep from getting hurt. Maccarinelli needs to clinch when his shorter opponents try to get inside on him. I don’t think any of these things are going to be taught to Maccarinelli, and that’s why I think he’s wasting his time with this whole thing. He should try and get with Emanuel Steward, and if not, he needs to retire.



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