Klitschko-Charr: Vitali needs to win decisively

By Boxing News - 07/09/2012 - Comments

Image: Klitschko-Charr: Vitali needs to win decisivelyBy Jason Kim: If WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (44-2, 40 KO’s) wants to be still seen as one of the two top heavyweights in the world, he’s got to defeat #7 WBC Manuel Charr (21-0, 11 KO’s) with ease on September 8th at the Olimpiyskiy, in Moscow, Russia.

Charr, 27, isn’t considered one of the major players in the heavyweight division despite his high ranking by the World Boxing Council. The ranking is much too high for the way that Charr has fought. Charr barely beat journeyman Zack Page (21-31-2) two years ago, winning a controversial 8 round majority decision.

Many of the fans who saw that fight, including this writer, had Page winning that bout. In Charr’s performances since that fight, he’s looked unspectacular in beating a host of 2nd tier opposition. His problems are many. For starters, Charr lacks hand speed, power, foot movement and defense. He’s easy to hit and is much too slow to compete against the best heavyweights. He does have decent size at 6’3 1/2″ 245lbs, but he’s still not big enough to dominate even guys smaller than him. Against Vitali, Charr will be out of his league and will likely be beaten easier than Vitali beat Chris Arreola three years ago.

This could be the last fight of Vitali’s career depending on whether he gets elected into the Ukrainian parliament in October. Vitali is still undecided as to whether or not he’ll continue to fight. However, if he’s smart he might want to try and continue, because he may not like politics, and it would disappointing for him to retire if he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.

Vitali is coming off of a harder than expected performance against Britain’s Dereck Chisora in February. Vitali won a 12 round decision in that fight but injured his left shoulder in the process, forcing him to fight most of the bout with only his right hand. By the end of the fight Vitali was badly winded, and could barely speak afterwards. There’s no question that Chisora had a lot more left in the tank at the time the fight ended. However, Chisora still wasn’t landing much due to his limited size and skills.

Charr recently defeated Taras Bydenko in one of Charr’s better performances last March. He was able to use his power to control the fight, and escape relatively unscathed.



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