By Dan Ambrose: Tomasz Adamek (44-1, 28 KO’s) is under the impression that he’s going to beat the hulking WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (42-2, 39 KO’s) with speed and movement tonight in their fight in Wroclaw, Poland. Adamek is convinced, for whatever reason, that he’s got enough speed to beat the 40-year-old 6’7″ Vitali. I wish it were that simple.

The major problem that Adamek has besides being little is that he really isn’t particularly fast, at least not with his hands. Adamek is basically about as fast as rolly-polly Chris Arreola in terms of hand speed. The only thing that Adamek is fast at is running, and that’s not going to be much of any help to him tonight other than putting off the inevitable.

“I’m quicker than Vitali and I am going to kill hi with my speed,” Adamek said to Sky Sports News. “Speed is power and it is going to be everything in this fight. I an not afraid to go in the ring to fight such a big guy.”

It’s nice to know that Adamek isn’t afraid, but that doesn’t count for much in helping him win the fight. A lot of fighters aren’t afraid and still get beaten, and I see that as the case here. It just means that Adamek is overconfident and has overestimated his own talent, because he needs to be very afraid of Vitali. Adamek doesn’t have the speed, and he doesn’t have the size to do much of anything against Vitali except to run.

The way that Adamek talks he seems to be under the impression that he’s in the same class as former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye in the speed department. But all you need to do is take a quick look at some of Adamek’s recent fights to see that he’s pretty slow and no quicker than recent Vitali victims like Albert Sosnowski, Shannon Briggs and Odlanier Solis.

I actually think Briggs and Solis are faster punchers than Adamek, and that’s kind of sad. I see Adamek being about on the same level as Sosnowski in hand speed and just a little better in fighting ability. This is a mismatch of course, and we’d likely not even be seeing this fight made if Adamek had actually fought some quality contenders instead of the mostly 2nd and 3rd tier heavyweights that Adamek did end up fighting. To say that Adamek has been matched softly to get to this fight with Vitali is being kind. He’s really taken it easy for the last two years to get his big money title shot, and now we’re going to see what happens to fighters that use the backdoor to get title fights – they get wiped out.