By Jason Kim: Polish heavyweight Mariusz Wach (27-1, 15 KO’s) may have lost by a wide margin in losing to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (59-3, 50 KO’s) by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores of 120-107, 120-107 and 119-119-109 last Saturday night in Hamburg, Germany, but compared to many of the recent heavyweights that have challenged the 6’6″ Wladimir and lost, Wach looked pretty good.

To be sure, Wach got dominated and he took a beating in the fight, especially in the last five rounds. But one got a sense that Wach had the potential of ending the fight at any time if were able to land his big right hand. Wach did connect with a powerful right hand in the 5th and it seemed to hurt Wladimir because he immediately grabbed Wach in a clinch.

After the fight Wladimir said he wasn’t really hurt by that shot but it looked like he was. Wach just needed to land one more big right hand punch and he could have ended the fight. However, Wach blew it by crowding Wladimir and this stifled his own power, so that when he did land another shot after missing a handful of them, it didn’t have nearly the same kind of power that the long right hand that he hurt Wladimir with to begin with.

Wach did much better than past Wladimir opponents such as Tony Thompson, Jean Marc Mormeck, David Haye, Eddie Chambers, Samuel Peter, Ruslan Chagaev, Sultan Ibragimov, Ray Austin, Calvin Brook, and Chris Byrd. That’s a pretty impressive list of heavyweights that Wach out-performed against Wladimir. That shows you the kind of potential that the 6’7 1/2″ Wach has.

There were some things that Wach failed to do that would have given him a chance at winning the fight. To start with he didn’t throw enough jabs and that was something would have definitely helped him because he could have puffed up Wladimir’s face and possibly cut him if he could have jabbed. Wach didn’t use his left hand very much, and it became clear almost immediately that he hadn’t developed this hand nearly as much as his right.

Wach was effectively a one-armed fighter against Wladimir and that really hurt his chances of winning. By now, Wach’s trainer should have taught him how to throw a good jab and to use his left, but for some reason that part of his game appeared undeveloped in the Wladimir fight. Wach should have thrown more right hands because that was his money punch and didn’t use it often enough to give himself a good chance of winning.