By Dan Ambrose: WBO cruiserweight champion Krzysztof Glowacki (26-0, 16 KOs) will inside the ring tonight in defense of his title against unbeaten Oleksandr Usyk (9-0, 9 KOs) at the Ergo Arena in Gdansk, Poland. This is Glowacki’s big opportunity to show if he’s for real or not. We saw him beat what many boxing fans saw as a played out Marco Huck last year, but the fight didn’t prove much other than Glowacki beating a guy that had been involved in a lot of wars.
Glowacki’s last fight against Steve Cunningham war hardy an impressive performance. Glowacki was getting outworked by the 40-year-old Cunningham all throughout the fight. If not for Glowacki getting knockdowns in rounds 2, 10 and 12, he would have lost the fight. That’s pretty hard to believe.
If Cunningham had been able to stay on his feet in those rounds, then he would have beaten Glowacki. The lack of defensive skills in Glowacki’s game could come back to haunt him tonight against the 29-year-old Usyk, because he’s a superb boxer with the height, reach and overall power advantage. Usyk is also a southpaw. Glowacki is going to need to find some defensive skills somewhere for him to win the fight tonight, because he’s facing a really solid fighter in Usyk, who captured a gold medal in the 2012 Olympics for Ukraine.
There are a lot of boxing fans who believe that Usyk is already the best fighter in the cruiserweight division. Tonight’s fight will show whether Usyk is better than Glowacki at least. If Usyk can beat Glowacki in front of his own fans in Poland, then his next move will be to try and get fights against the other champions Tony Bellew, Denis Lebedev, and Beibut Shumenov.
Glowacki’s best wins on his resume are Cunningham and Huck. Those were good wins, but neither of those fighters are what they once were. Glowacki has never fought any of the other top fighters in the division like Bellew, Lebedev, Shumenov, Murat Gassiev, and Grigory Drozd.
It’s doubtful that Glowacki would beat all of those fighters, because he’s too dependent on getting knockdowns and knockouts to win his fights. His boxing skills aren’t what they need to be for him to beat all the top dogs in the cruiserweight division. The first hard fight where Glowacki isn’t able to produce a knockdown, he loses. Glowacki loads up too much on his shots, and you can’t do that at the upper levels of the sport for long if you want to be able to beat the higher skilled fighters like Usyk, Drozd, Gassiev, Shumenov and Bellew. The sooner Glowacki learns his lesson the quicker he’ll be able to make the needed adjustments to his game to start rebuilding his game from the bottom up.
The keys to the victory for Usyk tonight come down these areas:
– Box on the outside. Don’t let Glowacki get close enough to land his telegraphed left hands that he likes to throw.
– Jab constantly. Usyk has a great jab that he controls his opponents with. If he stays on the outside using his jab all night, he should be able to tenderize Glowacki’s face to set him up for big left hands.
– Resist throwing too many left hand power shots until later in the fight. Usyk can’t leave himself open for Glowacki’s big shots by opening up with a lot of his own power shots. That’s how Marco Huck got himself in trouble against Glowacki last year. Huck was on his way to winning the fight in the 11th round when he got tagged by a big left hand from Glowacki while attempting to land one of his own shots. Usyk can box circles around Glowacki if he stays disciplined and doesn’t try too much. Usyk doesn’t need to be too ambitious in this fight, because Glowaki is always going to be there for him to hit with jabs all night long. Glowacki gives himself away when he’s getting ready to throw a power shot, because he lowers his head like a little bull before launching his shots. Cunningham saw the tendencies in Glowacki’s fighting style and he was nailing him with shots all night long. But where Cunningham blew it was by getting too greedy by trying too much. If he had stayed disciplined by boxing Glowacki, he would have won a wide points decision.
– Use movement to confuse and frustrate Glowacki. If you look at Glowacki’s fights, he HATES when his opponents use movement, because he’s short legs and he’s poor at cutting off the ring. Usyk can frustrate Glowacki all night long if he stays on the move, jabs and pot shots him with single left hands to the head. Glowacki mainly does well against stationary fighters that stand and wait for him to throw his punches. If Usyk stays in one place all night long, then this could be a 50-50 fight. I’m not saying that Glowacki will absolutely win, but he’ll have a much better chance of winning then he would if Usyk moved all night long. Usyk can’t afford to make it easy for Glowaki by fighting in the same mistake prone way as his past opponents, because that would be a stupid move.