Tony Bellew back in action on March 3rd in Liverpool, England

By Boxing News - 12/23/2012 - Comments

bellew434By Scott Gilfoid: #3 WBC, #14 IBF light heavyweight contender Tony Bellew (19-1, 12 KO’s) will be fighting on March 3rd against an opponent still to be determined at the Echo Arena, in Liverpool, United Kingdom. Bellew, 30, is hoping to get a title shot against WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson in 2013. Bellew got a huge boost in the World Boxing Council rankings when he beat little known contender Roberto Feliciano Bolonti by a 12 round unanimous decision last month to capture the WBC Silver light heavyweight title.

I’d never seen or heard of Bolonti before but after seeing him fight; I now know why I never heard of the guy. He looked absolutely terrible and I have no clue why the WBC had this ranked in their top 10. He fought like a nice 3rd tier fighter and showed little in the way of skills, making it easy for Bellew to pick up the WBC Silver 175 pound strap.

As much as Bellew wants to face Dawson in 2013, it’s not going to happen this year I hate to say. First off, Bellew isn’t ranked high enough to get a title shot against Dawson in 2013, because in order for Bellew to get the shot against Dawson he’ll have to become his mandatory challenger. Dawson isn’t going to waste a perfectly good title defense on an obscure British fighter that few boxing fans in the United States have ever heard of. There’s no interest in a Bellew-Dawson fight in the U.S.

Okay, so we’ve established that Bellew won’t be getting a title shot for Dawson in 2013, but if he Dawson does for some reason choose to fight Bellew then I think we could see a massacre because Bellew is not even close to being ready to face a talent like Dawson.

Bellew is too slow and robotic right now to be able to hang with Dawson. If you go back and look at how badly Bellew struggled against Nathan Cleverly and Edison Miranda, you’ll see that Bellew fights like he’s got a punch me in the face sign taped to him. He’s not good defensively, and he leaves himself wide open when he throws his big power shots. He loads up on everything he throws and leaves himself open and gets tagged nine times out of ten.

Dawson lost his last fight to the best fighter in the super middleweight division Andre Ward. Dawson may have looked terrible in that fight but you can explain away the defeat because he was weight drained and he was fight the best fighter in the entire division. If Ward had moved up to light heavyweight, Dawson would have done a lot better against him. I’m not saying he would have won the fight but he’d have given Ward a lot more problems than Carl Froch did.

My advice to Bellew is to forget about trying to get a fight with Dawson in 2013 because he’s not going to get that fight. Bellew needs a heck of a lot more seasoning before he takes on the likes of Dawson. I’d suggest that Bellew step it up and face the likes of Denis Grachev, Cornelius White, Jean Pascal, Isaac Chilemba, Ismayl Sillakh, Sergey Kovalev and Karo Murat. Those talents should be able to give Bellew the experience he needs. Unfortunately, I see him losing to all of them.



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