Oosthuizen in tough fight against Zuniga on Saturday

By Boxing News - 11/06/2012 - Comments

Image: Oosthuizen in tough fight against Zuniga on SaturdayBy Dan Ambrose: IBO super middleweight champion Thomas Oosthuizen (20-0-1, 13 KO’s) faces a bigger hitter in Fulgencio Zuniga (25-5-1, 22 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Emperor’s Palace, Kempton Park, Gauteng, South Africa. The 6’4″ Oosthuizen needs a win in this fight against the 35-year-old Zuniga to keep moving forward towards a future world title shot against one of the champions.

Rodney Berman, the promoter for the 24-year-old Oosthuizen, told Supersport.com “Tommy can’t afford to muck about. This guy can crack and if Tommy isn’t at his best he’ll end up on the canvas.”

Berman is right. Zuniga, if nothing else, can really punch and if you stand in front of him to let him get his shots off, he’ll make it difficult for you. Even a prime Kelly Pavlik had a lot of problems beating a younger Zuniga years ago in 2005 in a 9th round TKO win for Pavlik. For boxing fans that saw that fight they remember Zuniga landing countless bombs on the steel-chin of Pavlik and fighting him almost to a standstill until the fight was ultimately halted in the 9th.

Oosthuizen is a good fighter with decent power, long arms and good height. However, his problem is he gets hit too much and he turns what should be easy fights for him into very difficult ones. It’s only a matter of time before Oosthuizen meets someone with enough power to take advantage of his poor defense by knocking him out.

Could Zuniga be that fighter that gives Oothuizen his first loss? I don’t know but Oosthuizen needs to try and get Zuniga out as quickly as he can because leaving a puncher like him in the ring for 12 rounds will result in Oosthuizen taking a ton of punishment. Oosthuizen has been cut in a number of his fights around his eyes, and he can’t afford to suffer any bad cuts in this fight because there will be a potential of losing on cuts.



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