By Sean McDaniel: WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin (24-0, 16 KO’s) retained his World Boxing Association title on Saturday night with a controversial 12 round majority decision over his cruiserweight challenger Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s) at the Porsche Arena in Stuttgart, Germany. The final judges’ scores were 116-112, 114-114 and 116-113.

Although the outcome was controversial, as Huck appeared to do the better work, the fight was close enough to where you can’t really call it a complete robbery. Huck honestly should have lost at least five points for his nasty habit of pushing down on Povetkin and hitting him with rabbit punches. Huck fought a really dirty fight and the referee Luis Pabon was pretty much useless the entire fight. It’s hard to imagine a referee seeing all those rabbit punches from Huck and failing to take off at least a half dozen points for all of those shots. It was like watching an MMA fight rather than a boxing match.

Povetkin got off to a fast start in the first three rounds, dominating the action with his jab, left hooks and right hands. Huck took over the fight from the 4th round and was able to hurt Povetkin in the 7th round from a big right hand. Povetkin wasn’t helping himself by continually leaning forward to try and get out of the way of Huck’s jabs and right hands. This enabled Huck to land a lot of chopping shots that wouldn’t have landed had Povetkin has sense enough to stop leaning over. Povetkin clearly missed the advice of trainer Teddy Atlas, who couldn’t make it over for the fight due to his other job with ESPN2.

Huck seemed to be in complete control of the fight by the 9th round, with Povetkin looking completely gassed and not having the power or the smarts to deal with Huck’s primitive attacks. However, Povetkin came back well in the 11th, doing enough with his combination punching to win the fight. The 12th was dominated by Huck, who landed some nice right hands and outworked Povetkin.

I had Huck winning the fight, but I think he should have ultimately lost it anyway do to his constant rabbit punches. Since he got away with a ton of fouls, I have no problem with him getting jobbed in this fight. He got away with more than enough and should consider himself lucky not to have been disqualified. I got to hand it to Huck; he throws a beautiful rabbit punch. Too bad they’re considered illegal.

Both Huck and Povetkin would be fodder for either of the Klitschko brothers. Even a one-armed Vitali, would take care of these guys.