By Jason Kim: WBO junior middleweight champion Serhiy Dzinziruk (37-1, 23 KO’s) will be making his 7th world title defense of his World Boxing Organization title on September 30th against number #1 WBO ranked challenger Lukas Konecny (47-3, 22 KO’s) at the Hala Rondo, Brno, Czech Republic. Dzinziruk, 35, and Konecny have previously fought before three years ago in 2008.

Dzinziruk won that fight by a close 12 round majority decision in a fight that could have gone either way. Dzinziruk has since had a fairly easy time in beating the average opposition that he’s been matched up against. He did, however, lose his last fight against WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez last March in an 8th round stoppage loss.

Dzinziruk failed to throw enough punches in that fight and was easily beaten. You can usually count on Dzinizruk to throw a lot of jabs at least, but he didn’t even do that in this fight and just seemed to be afraid to let his hands go. In fairness to Dzinziruk, it could be that he was afraid of Martinez countering him with a straight left hand. Martinez had recently knocked out Paul Williams, so that may be one of the reasons why Dzinziruk seemed to reluctant to do anything offensively.

Konecny, 5’8″, has limited height and reach. He’s a pressure fighter with heavy hands and in his last fight against Dzinziruk, he was able to walk through his jabs to land short power punches on the inside. This is obviously what Konecny will be trying to do in a rematch. He may succeed if Dzinziruk is once again plagued by an inability to throw enough punches. I can see Konecny winning this fight on workrate alone.