By Jim Dower: WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s) will be making his 9th title defense of his World Boxing Organization title on May 5th against WBO interim cruiserweight champion Ola Afolabi (19-2, 9 KO’s) in a rematch at the Erfurt, in Thüringen, Germany.

Huck and Afolabi made a deal for the fight, thus avoiding a purse bid. Afolabi, #1 WBO, #4 WBA, #7 IBF, #7 WBC, and Huck fought in the past in December 2009, with Huck winning a close 12 round unanimous decision. Afolabi, 32, has improved since then and has won his last five fights. In his last bout, he defeated Valery Brudov by a 5th round stoppage earlier this month to capture the interim WBO cruiserweight title.

Huck recently moved up in weight to challenge WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin but lost by a 12 round majority decision in a fight that a lot of boxing fans felt he won. However, Huck showed a lot of flaws in that fight and seemed only capable of using his right hand for any real power punching. Huck got away with a lot of rabbit punching in that fight and should have arguably lost a number of points for the fouling.

Huck hasn’t exactly been stepping it up at cruiserweight since winning a controversial 12 round decision over Denis Lebedev in December 2010. Since then, Huck has beaten three consecutive non-top five opponents Ran Nakash, Hugo Hernan Garay and Rogelio Omar Rossi. It’s good that Huck will finally be facing a top rated fighter for a change because it’s been ages since he did that.

Afolabi now has the skills needed to beat Huck. However, it could come down to whether the judges give more weight to Huck’s power shots because he’s going to be out-jabbed and out-worked by Afolabi. That’s almost a given. Huck will likely land three to five good power shots per round and end up out-worked by a significant margin by the busier and better skilled Afolabi. This is why Afolabi is going to have to make sure he lands even more power shots than Huck because he can’t afford to have the judges give the fight to Huck based on a slight power punch connect advantage.

On the undercard will be a fight between undefeated heavyweight prospect Edmund Gerber (19-0, 13 KO’s) facing veteran Maurice Harris (25-15-2, 11 KO’s).