By Allan Fox: The bad thing about the sanctioning bodies is they make it so easy for guys to get title shots without having to work their way up to get the shot in the first place. This leads unfortunately to a lot of sorry mismatches. This will likely be the case with IBF/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko’s rematch against 40-year-old Tony Thompson (36-2, 24 KO’s) on July 7th at the Stade de Suisse, in Berne, Switzerland.
Wladimir already beat Thompson four years ago by an 11th round TKO. To show you how easy it’s been for Thompson to get a rematch just look at the opponents he’s faced since the Wladimir defeat to get his rematch:
Adnan Serin
Chazz Witherspoon
Owen Beck
Paul Marinaccio
Maurice Harris
There’s not one fighter among them that I see as being good enough to where Thompson should be getting a rematch with Wladimir. He’s basically had five bouts against 2nd tier fighters and hasn’t had to take on anyone that would give him problems.
Thompson should have at least fought one of the following fighters Denis Boytsov, Alexander Dimitrenko, Kubrat Pulev, Robert Helenius, Tyson Fury, David Price, Chris Arreola or Tomasz Adamek before getting a Wladimir rematch.
Thompson lacks the hand speed, power and the youth to beat Wladimir. On July 7th, Thompson will be getting knocked out again and there’s no ifs and buts about. He’s going to lose and lose badly in that fight. Too bad he didn’t fight someone good to at least show that he deserved a rematch.
Wladimir will probably fight Thompson the same way he did in 2008 by looking to land his right hands over and over again. Wladimir didn’t have much luck in landing his jabs because of Thompson being able to pick most of them off with his high guard. Wladimir seemed to abandon his jab and focus on throwing his right hand. He had a lot more success in landing that punch than he did with his jabs. Wladimir didn’t throw too many left hooks. I guess he was afraid of the southpaw Thompson nailing him with straight lefts or right hooks if he was to try and throw his left. Wladimir probably could have stopped Thompson in two or three rounds if he had focused on using his left hooks in combination with his right, but it looked like Wladimir didn’t have confidence in being able to take Thompson’s best shots if he were to get countered or hit while in the process of trying to land one of his left hooks.
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