By Dan Ambrose: WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin (24-0, 16 KO’s) won’t have much time to enjoy his 12 round majority decision win over WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s) from last Saturday night, because the World Boxing Association is only giving the 32-year-old Povetkin a mere 120 days before he’s required to defend his WBA belt against 39-year-old #1 WBA contender Hasim Rahman (50-7-2, 41 KO’s).

Compared to his struggle against the 27-year-old Huck last night, this should be a much easier fight because Rahman hasn’t fought a top tier heavyweight opponent since losing to IBF/WBO heavyweight champion IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in December 2008. Rahman has won five fights since then, but he’s let his weight get a little out of hand. In his best years, Rahman’s weight was in the neighborhood of 235 to 240.

However, in his last fight, Rahman weighed 284lbs for his win over 6th round stoppage win over journeyman Galen Brown last June. It’s unclear why the WBA has Rahman ranked No.1 because he’s faced five 2nd tier fighters since his defeat to Wladimir. Usually, you’d like to see a contender having faced at least one top tier opponent to get a #1 ranking, not five 2nd tier guys. All it leads to are mismatches and I see the Povetkin-Rahman fight as a huge mismatch at this point in Rahman’s career. Rahman’s last win over a top tier opponent came in August 2005 when he beat contender Monte Barrett by a 12 round decision to capture the WBC interim heavyweight title. That’s seven years ago. How can a heavyweight go that long in between wins over top tier opposition and get two title shots?

Povetkin struggled badly with Huck last night, needing to work really hard for the controversial win. Huck landed the harder shots, but wasn’t busy enough in many of the rounds and did a lot of fouling with rabbit punches to the back of Povetkin’s head. What got Povetkin through this fight was his high work rate, combination punching and defensive skills. Povetkin was always busy and pressing the attack, whereas Huck would attack in surges but would often miss with his right hands. The crowd was heavily in Huck’s favor, as they cheered everything he threw. It didn’t matter if Huck was connecting, the German crowd screamed with happiness each time he threw a shot. After the fight, many of the fans booed loudly when it was announced that Povetkin had won the decision. They thought that their hero Huck had done enough to win it, but I don’t agree with it. Huck did too much fouling. Huck landed way too many rabbit punches and did other sorts of fouling like shoving Povetkin’s head down, holding and hitting and lacing with his gloves. It looked like Povetkin was facing a crude amateur fighter who was using an anything goes type of fighting style. Towards the end of the fight, Povetkin adopted some of the fouling techniques that Huck was using, such as pulling his head down and punching while clinching, but for the most part Povetkin fought a clean fight.