Huck facing a tough opponent in Afolabi on May 5th

By Boxing News - 04/15/2012 - Comments

Image: Huck facing a tough opponent in Afolabi on May 5thBy Sean McDaniel: WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck (34-2, 25 KO’s) will be trying to turn things around with his career on May 5th next month against his #1 mandatory challenger Ola Afolabi (19-2-3, 9 KO’s) at the Messehalle, Erfurt, Thüringen, Germany. Afolabi gave Huck all kinds of problems in losing by a 12 round decision three years ago.

Afolabi has improved as a fighter, whereas Huck has been taking it easy on mostly soft opposition since his highly questionable 12 round split decision win over Denis Lebedev in 2010. Huck recently moved up in weight to fight WBA heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin last February, but Huck got out-worked by Povetkin and ended up losing a 12 round majority decision.

Huck will have to clean up his act from his performance against Povetkin, because he was throwing rabbit punches all night long in that fight and he’s incredibly lucky that the referee never docked points for these dangerous fouls. Povetkin was able to take the fight in the later rounds by throwing a lot of punches. Huck couldn’t fight that way and instead would rest in between flurries. He’d exploded after resting but he’d miss most of his shots by a mile.

Afolabi has the power to give Huck a lot of problems if he goes in trying to blast him out like he does with most of his opponents. If Huck fights in a wild and out of control manner like he usually does, Afolabi could take him out with a big shots. Huck is going to have to show some self control during his attacks.

Afolabi, 32, has looked especially good in his last three fights, beating Terry Dunstan by a 1st round KO last year in July, Lukasz Risiewicz by an eight round decision in September last year, and then beating Valery Brudov by a 5th round stoppage last March with the interim WBO cruiserweight title on the line.

It’s pretty astonishing that Afolabi is getting a shot at all against Huck, because he’s been in the milking stage of his WBO title, taking it easy since surviving a scare against Denis Lebedev in December 2010. Huck looked to have lost that fight by 9 rounds to 3, but the judges somehow gave his a controversial split decision win. Since that victory, Huck has faced all bottom tier fighters for his last three title defenses. It’s unclear why the WBO allowed Huck to do that because a top five opponent should have been given a chance at some point along the line.