Bellew: I’ll smash Flores to bits

By Boxing News - 08/13/2016 - Comments

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By Scott Gilfoid: Tony Bellew thinks he’s going to have an easy time beating fringe contender BJ Flores (32-2-1, 20 KOs) in their fight on October 15 at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. Bellew (27-2-1, 17 KOs) will be defending his World Boxing Council cruiserweight title that he won three months ago against Illunga Makabu.

The WBC recently gave Flores a near bottom #14 ranking with their organization after he signed for a fight against Bellew. It’s unclear why Flores wasn’t ranked in the top 15 by the WBC before he signed for the fight. It looks weird that Flores was ranked afterwards.

Anyway, Bellew was supposed to fight #1 WBC Mairis Briedis, but the WBC is going to let Bellew fight him at some point in the future. It might take place after Bellew fights heavyweight David Haye. I don’t expect Briedis to be given a shot at Bellew’s title until after both the Bellew-Flores and Bellew vs. Haye fights.

“He’s been mouthing off and following me around for a couple of years and I’m just a little bit fed up with him now,” said Bellew to skysports.com. ” I am going to smash BJ Flores to bits and be the first man stop him. All he keeps saying is that I am a light heavyweight, I am this, I am that, so we will soon find out.”

Nah, I don’t see Bellew being able to knockout Flores. The problem that Bellew has is that Flores is naturally bigger than him, and he moves around a great deal. It’s not easy to hit the 37-year-old Flores with power shots because he’s a highly mobile fighter with solid boxing skills. I mean, I don’t expect Flores to win the fight, but I do think he’ll survive the full 12 rounds without any problems.

Flores isn’t stupid. He doesn’t back up against the ropes and just plant himself there like a sparring partner. We won’t see that kind of dumb fighting from Flores in this fight. If Bellew is going to win this fight by a knockout, it means that he’ll need to do it with Flores in the center of the ring and on the move, because he’s not going to just stand there like a good sparring partner making it easy for him.

This will be the first title defense for Bellew in this fight of his WBC strap. Like I said, Bellew was supposed to be defending his title against his WBC #1 contender Briedis, but the WBC is letting him take a voluntary defense next. It’s not a big deal for me as long as Bellew fights Briedis in his next fight, but if he puts him on ignore for the remainder of 2016 and all of 2017, then you’ll have to wonder what’s going on with the WBC for them to be allowing him to do that.

“It’s looking like it’s going to be BJ Flores and I am really looking forward to it,” Bellew said.

What makes Flores such a bad choice for Bellew is the fact that he was recently beaten soundly by Beibut Shumenov by a 12 round unanimous decision last year in July. With Flores having been beaten not long ago, it makes you wonder what the logic is in Bellew being matched against him. I can understand Bellew fighting Flores if the guy had been beaten several years, but we’re talking about him losing just two fights again to Shumenov.

It doesn’t make sense at all. Champions fighting guys that were recently beaten makes no sense, because it cheapens the whole concept of a champion. Flores did win his last fight against someone Roberto Santos (12-4, 4 KOs), but we’re not talking about hi having beaten a world class contender, are we?

If Flores is going to be getting a world title shot against Bellew, then I’d much prefer that he go back and prove that he can avenge his loss to Shumenov first. Unfortunately, I don’t think Flores could beat Shumenov if they fought each other a 100 times. Shumenov appears to have his number, and I see it staying that way.

Flores will give Bellew problems with his pot shots and movement in this fight, but ultimately, I can’t see him beating him. Flores lacks the qualities that it takes to beat Bellew.

The guys that would beat Bellew are the following fighters:

Mairis Briedis

Oleksandr Usyk

Marco Huck

Beibut Shumenov

Murat Gassiev

Thomas Williams Jr.

Krzystof Glowacki

Denis Lebedev

Yunier Dorticos

Dmitry Kudryashov

Dmytro Kucher

Krzystof Wlodarczyk

I think there are 12 guys in the cruiserweight division that would absolutely beat Bellew for sure 100 percent, and another 10 to 15 guys that would have a very good chance of beating him. Does that make Bellew a paper champion? I think you can make a very strong argument that Bellew is a paper champion and not the genuine article. Look at who Bellew won the vacant WBC title fighting. He did it against Makabu, who I don’t rate as a top 15 contender.