By Scott Gilfoid: Tony “Bomber” Bellew will be making his first defense of his WBC World cruiserweight title on October 15 against non-contender BJ Flores at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. It looks like the World Boxing Council decided to let the 33-year-old Bellew take a voluntary defense against the 37-year-old Flores rather forcing him to fight his #1 WBC contender Mairis Briedis. That’s a good thing for Bellew, beause he very likely would have been steamrolled by Brieidis in lightning fashion. BJ Flores is currently ranked No.26 by the WBC. My guess is we’ll soon see Flores pushed up to at least the No.15 spot in the WBC’s rankings very, very soon. If not, it would be quite sad that Bellew is defending against a guy ranked No.26. But it’s a sad match-up no matter where the WBC moves Flores to in their rankings, because he looked horrible in losing to Beibut Shumenov two fights ago.
Bellew won the vacant WBC title last May in defending Illunga Makabu by a 3rd round knockout in Liverpool, England. After the fight, Bellew stood up like a prize-winning rooster, crowing about his win, saying that he’s the best cruiserweight in the world.
The words sounded nice, but unfortunately it didn’t make sense. I mean, for Bellew to be the best cruiserweight in the world, he would have to prove it against the arguably more talented fighters in the division like Denis Lebedev, Krzystof Glowacki, Oleksandr Usyk, Grigory Drozd, Marco Huck, Murat Gassiev and Brieidis. Those guys are much better fighters than Makabu.
I hate to break the news to Bellew, but he didn’t beat the best fighter in the division last May when he beat Makabu. He beat a flawed fighter with good punching power, but a ton of holes in his game. With all the yapping that Bellew was doing about him being the best cruiserweight, I’m just wondering why he’s decided to fight the aging BJ Flores, who isn’t ranked in the top 15, rather than one of the above mentioned talents? I’m just saying. If you’re the best in the division, as Bellew is blabbering about, then why isn’t he fighting Gassiev, Brieidis, Glowacki, Usyk, Drozd, Huck or Lebedev?
If the WBC forced Bellew to fight his #1 challenger, he would be forced to defend against Mairis Briedis. That would be a fight that Bellew would surely lose due to the huge talent that Briedis possesses. It’s not surprising that Bellew decided to take the easy path and fight the recently beaten Flores.
If Bellew wins his fight against Flores, which I highly likely, then we’ll see him look to move up to heavyweight to fight David Haye at some kind of agreed upon weight. The bad thing is Bellew will likely be able to hold onto his World Boxing Council cruiserweight title win or lose because it won’t have his title on the line. In the meantime, the No.1 WBC contender Briedis will have to sit and wait instead of getting his title shot straightaway like he should have been able to.
Bellew should have been facing the dangerous Briedis in his first defense. It would have been a very difficult one that I think he would have lost badly. Breidis is the real deal. I’m not surprised thought that Bellew is taking a soft defense agasint Flores, because I figured that he would put off the fight against Breidis or the WBC ‘Champion in Recess’ Grigory Drozd for as long as possible because of the potential of getting beaten and getting beaten in a royal fashion.
With the way that Bellew is doing it now, he’ll have a soft defense against the aging Flores, whose career has slowed to a crawl in recent years, and then face David Haye for a nice payday with nothing to lose due to the fight being at heavyweight. After that, depending on whether the WBC will finally force Bellew to defend against his #1 contender Briedis, we’ll either see Bellew take another voluntary defense or he’ll fight Breidis. My guess is Bellew will get another voluntary. That would be bad news for Breidis, because it would mean that we probably won’t see Bellew face him until 2018. At that point, I see Bellew getting knocked out and sent back to the contender ranks. That scenario would play out in October if the WBC forced Bellew to fight the talented Breidis in my view, but obviously that’s not going to happen. The WBC is letting Bellew fight the 2nd tier Flores.
I’m still not quite sure why the WBC is sanctioning the Bellew vs. Flores fight though. Flores isn’t ranked in the top 15 by any of the sanctioning bodies, and usually that’s a requirement for the champions to make defenses. Unless the WBC is going to give Flores a top 15 ranking in the near future, it somehow makes the Bellew vs. Flores fight look like a cherry pick on Bellew’s part.
We saw Flores losing to Beibut Shumenov by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last year in July 2015. Flores lost the fight by the scores of 116-112, 116-112 and 116-112. Flores came back in his next fight to defeat Roberto Santos by a six round decision last May.
“The truth is, I should have been champ last July (he lost a decision to Beibut Shumenov with an interim belt on the line) but I take it all in stride and all I have been through has made me like a chiseled piece of iron,” said Flores to RingTV.com. “Nothing Tony can do will break me down or surprise me. Yet he will greatly underestimate me and be very surprised in the very first round. I will take him to school before I KNOCK his [backside] clean out!”
Flores looked really bad last year in losing to Shumenov. It was an easy fight for Shumenov, who used an in and out attack to get the better of Flores in that fight. Flores did a poor job of cutting off the ring and forcing Shumenov to slug it out with him in that fight. But as bad as Flores looked on the night, I think Shumenov would have punched his lights out if he had forced him into a phone booth type of war. Standing and slugging has never been Flores’ fighting style. He’s always been one of those hit and move type of fighters, which is why he didn’t have anything to fall back on when he fought a guy that could that style better than him in Shumenov.
Bellew is a pretty one-dimensional fighter. A young and active Flores would likely out-box Bellew and win a dull 12-round decision. However, Flores is nearing 40 now, and he’s not been fighting a lot recently, and his career has seemed to reached a stall point. Flores is getting the arguably undeserved title shot at the wrong point in his career. If he had gotten this title shot 10 years ago, then I think he’d win. Of course, if Flores was still young and in his prime, no way do I think he’d have been considered as an opponent for Bellew even for a second. I think Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn would have selected someone from the bottom of the WBC’s rankings like Andrew Tabiti, Noel Gevor or Stivens Bujaj.