By Allan Fox: IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (61-3, 51 KO’s) has been busy talking up his next over-matched opponent Alex Leapai (30-4-3, 24 KO’s), who Wladimir will be facing on April 26th in Germany. This fight has the makings of a one of the poorer matches that Wladimir has been involved due to the low quality resume that Leapai has, and because of his very slow hand speed.
The WBO could have selected picked at least 10 better heavyweights to setup for the WBO heavyweight eliminator bout, but they chose Leapai and Denis Boytsov to fight it out. The result is that Wladimir is looking at what appears to be an easy win for him on April 26th.
“I think he’s very motivated,” Wladimir said to the Guardian. “I’m ready for the challenge. He’s the proper age for a heavyweight. He’s 34. Whatever is going to be in the ring, I’ll be ready for it. And please don’t blame me if it’s a one-sided fight.”
Even though this is a WBO mandatory title defense for Wladimir, he will end up taking a lot of heat if this fight turns out to be a poor mismatch like his previous fights against Mariusz Wach, Jean-Marc Mormeck, Tony Thompson, and Francesco Pianeta. The problem is the fans will see it as a situation where Wladimir has hand-picked Leapai rather than him being put in a position where he has to defend against Leapai for him to keep his WBO title.
Wladimir could help himself if he chose to fight good opposition when he’s defending his title in optional title defenses. He didn’t need to fight Wach, Pianeta and Mormeck. Those were choices that he made, and the fights were poor mismatches with Wladimir beating up guys that didn’t look good enough to belong ranked in the top 15. Wladimir could have fought a number of heavyweights with more talent than those fighters, but instead he took it easy and now fans are giving him grief because of all the mismatches that he’s been involved in recently.
Leapai really doesn’t have the tools to beat a fighter like Wladimir. The speed isn’t there, and this is going to be a fight where fans are going to be waiting for Leapai to get halted like he did in his 9th round TKO loss to Kevin Johnson in 2012. The fact that Leapai was beaten by Johnson is a red flag that this is going to be a really bad mismatch, because Wladimir would easily beat Johnson if he were to be the one facing him on April 26th.
The good news for boxing fans is that Wladimir will finally be facing a good opponent later this year when he defends against his IBF mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev. That’s a fight that you can actually call a 50-50 fight if Pulev brings his best ‘A’ game to the ring against Wladimir.
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