By Jason Kim: Former WBC heavyweight champion Hasim Rahman (50-7-2, 41 KO’s) knows what he has to do to beat WBA World heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin (24-0, 16 KO’s) on Saturday night and that’s to knock him out when they meet at the Sporthalle, Alsterdorf, in Hamburg, Germany. Rahman, 39, has gotten older, he’s put on a lot weight and lost a lot of what little speed he once had, but he can still punch like he did in his prime. The power is still there.

If you were to point to one area in the 33-year-old Povetkin’s game where he’s vulnerable, besides his conditioning, you’d have to say it’s his chin. Povetkin was staggered in his last fight by WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck, who moved up from cruiserweight to face Povtkin last February. If a cruiserweight like Huck had enough power to hurt Povetkin, then an eve bigger puncher like Rahman has more than enough power to do the same if not more.

Rahman said to Fightnews.com “I know what I have to do and that is to knock him out.”

Rahman previously knocked out Lennox Lewis and Corrie Sanders. Those were Rahman’s best knockout wins of his career. However, he’s had problems taking shots as well, as Oleg Maskaev twice knocked him out, Lewis stopped him in their rematch, and Wladimir Klitschko easily put Rahman down in a 7th round TKO in 2008.

Rahman’s biggest problem is that he hasn’t faced a quality opponent in four years since his loss to Wladimir. You don’t like to see a world class fighter taking four years off in terms of facing good opposition and just taking easy by fighting 2nd and 3rd tier opponents like Rahman has been doing. That’s not good to do, because it’s hard to stay sharp when you’re only weak opponents, all of which Rahman knocked out.

Rahman’s not had the chance to work on his stamina with those fights, and he’s probably going to need to be in excellent condition if Povetkin is able to take the fight into the second half. Rahman hasn’t been past the 6th round since he lost to Wladimir in 2008, and it could be trouble for Rahman if Povetkin is able to take his big power shots in the first six rounds. We could see Rahman run out of gas and get stopped just on being exhausted like he was in the two fights against Maskaev.

Povetkin isn’t a real puncher but he can land hard enough to give you problems if he can get his shots off consistently. Rahman can guard against this by using his long seven inch reach advantage to try and keep the action on the outside where Povetkin will have a tougher time landing. It depends on how heavy Rahman comes in. Sometimes he just looks fat, too fat to stay on the outside and jab. If Rahman comes into this fight weighing 260 lbs and above, he’s going to have to try and slug with Povetkin because he’s not going to be able to beat him by a 12 round decision carrying around that kind of weight.