By Sean McDaniel: If former EBU middleweight champion Grzegorz Proksa (26-1, 19 KO’s) is smart he’ll stay away from fighting a rematch with Kerry Hope (17-3, 1 KO’s) as long as he can and perhaps forever, because Proksa was badly exposed by Hope in his 12 round decision loss to him last weekend. The judges scored it 115-112, 114-113 and 114-114.
However, I had Hope winning by four rounds. Proksa was a spent force by the 4th round and was only fight in brief spurts. Proksa fought much of the fight backed up against the rope like 40-year-old past his prime. This enabled Hope to really give it to Proksa with combinations and work him over.
Johnny Nelson, of Sky Sports, said this about Proksa’s performance as quoted by walesonlin.co.uk “His arrogance cost him that fight. He had no respect for Hope’s power. He has only one stoppage and he thought this guy can’t punch, but Hope showed grit and determination to win.”
I don’t see it as an arrogance thing. I just think Proksa never did learn how to fight and he’s got this weird post shot style of fighting with his guard hanging down in front of him, fighting in poor imitation of American fighters like Roy Jones. The style doesn’t work well for Proksa because he’s not fast like Jones and he gets clobbered, as we saw against Hope.
Proksa looked to be too small for the taller 5’10” Hope and besides being smaller, Proksa wasn’t able to match Hope’s work rate. He was a lot busier and just a much stronger fighter. Proksa looked like someone from the junior middleweight division facing a strong middleweight. It wasn’t going to be good for him and you could see that early on when Proksa’s shots had no effect on Hope.
Right now, Proksa is still healing up from the large cut he received over his left eye from a head clash in the 2nd round. However, once that cut heals, Proksa needs to think seriously about moving down in weight to the 154 pound division and getting a good trainer that can teach him how to fight properly because he fights in a very crude manner still. He needs to learn how to keep his guard up, put his punches together and move with more fluidity around the ring. He did so many things wrong against Hope that even if he wasn’t completely flawed as he is, he still would have lost.
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