By Scott Gilfoid: #3 WBO German based heavyweight contender Christian Hammer (17-3, 10 KOs) is predicting a knockout victory over #1 WBO Tyson Fury (23-0, 17 KOs) in their scheduled 12 round fight this Saturday night on February 28th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Hammer, 27, not only plans on stopping the 6’9” Fury, but he sees it as a clinical knockout where he knocks Fury out cold. That’s going to be kind of hard for Hammer to do, because he’s not a big puncher.
Hammer’s got cruiserweight type power at the heavyweight level, and he’s also not very tall at just 6’2”. It’s going to be awfully tough for Hammer to lay a glove on Fury, especially with the way he fights nowadays with him staying on the outside and holding a lot.
There’s no question that Fury’s chin is suspect, but I don’t know that Hammer has the KO power to do the job. If Hammer could at least punch as hard as Steve Cunningham, then I could see him knocking Fury out. But the problem Hammer has is he’s not a good puncher, and he’s slow as heck.
You’ve got to give Fury’s promoter credit for picking out Hammer out of the bunch for Fury to fight, because he’s tailor-made for Fury. Hammer has an inflated #3 ranking with the World Boxing Organization based on wins over fluff opponents.
The only halfway decent opponents he’s faced are Mariusz Wach and Taras Bidenko, and they both whipped him. I mean, that’s not exactly motivating awe inspiring that Hammer has lost to the only slightly decent opposition he’s faced during his career. Hammer also has a very, very, controversial win over journeyman Kevin Johnson from their fight in December 2013.
“Tyson Fury will not go the distance against me he will be getting knocked-out clean and left to pick up the pieces after the fight,” Hammer said via Fightnews.com. “He cannot hurt me with his punches because I’m in the best shape of my career for this fight and he will not last against me. He has been put down before, he can be hit and hurt.”
If Fury were facing a talented heavyweight like Deontay Wilder, I would have no doubts that Fury will be getting knocked clean out on Saturday night, because Deontay can actually punch. Deontay is too fast and too powerful for a fighter like Fury to deal with. But in the case of Hammer, I don’t think this guy can punch his way out of a wet paper bag.
He’s just really slow and weak, and that ranking the WBO gave Hammer is totally inflated in my view. None of the other sanctioning bodies even has Hammer ranked in their top 15, and you have to wonder what the WBO was thinking when they gave him the ranking. To me, Hammer looks completely 2nd tier, and I see him as a journeyman level heavyweight rather than someone with a top five ranking.
Also on Saturday’s Fury-Hammer card are the following fights:
Liam Walsh vs. Joe Murray
Dmitry Chudinov vs. Chris Eubank Jr
Lewis Pettitt vs. TBA
Bradley Skeete vs. Anzor Gamgebeli
Frank Buglioni vs. Ivan Jukic
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