By Scott Gilfoid: WBC Silver light heavyweight champion Tony Bellew (19-1-1, 12 KO’s) will be getting what many boxing fans feel is an undeserved rematch against #3 WBC, Isaac Chilemba (20-1-2, 9 KO’s) this Saturday night on the undercard of the Carl Froch vs. Mikkel Kessler fight card at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Bellew, #1 WBC, fought to a controversial 12 round draw against Chilemba last March in Bellew’s hometown of Liverpool, UK, and he Bellew looked terrible in that fight, getting beaten to the punch all night long.
Bellew fought like he was blindfolded for 12 rounds. That’s how bad he looked and how bad the judging was for that fight. Chilemba calmly picked Bellew apart from the 4th round on after using the first three rounds to figure out his fighting style before pushing ahead.
Once Chilemba realized that Bellew was little more than wild slugger, he went after him with abandon and boxed his way to what should have been an easy decision. However, with the fight in Bellew’s hometown of Liverpool, Chilemba obviously needed a lot more in order to take the judges out of the equation entirely.
The rematch between Chilemba and Bellew isn’t taking place in Bellew’s hometown again, but it is in the UK, and that could mean that Chilemba is going to have to really put a hurting on Bellew in order to make sure that we don’t see a repeat of what we saw last March with the controversial decision.
Chilemba is one of the best defensive fighters I’ve ever seen before, and reminds me a lot of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Andre Dirrell. He has a knack of making his opponents miss with their shots even when he’s standing directly in front of them.
I like Chilemba in this fight. I think he’s smarter, faster, better defensively, the cooler fighter, and he’s the better skilled guy. Bellew is going to come out and try and overpower Chilemba with brute strength. In other words, Bellew is going to try and take a page out of Froch’s playbook by bum rushing Chilemba in every round in hopes of blasting him out like he did against a series of god awful opponents in the past two years.
I don’t see it happening, and I’m willing to bet that Bellew looks as just as clumsy and uncoordinated as he did last time he fought Chilemba. The only thing I’m not sure about is the judging. Chilemba may have to really clown Bellew in order to get a win in London on Saturday.
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