By Eric Baldwin: Light heavyweight contenders Isaac Chilemba (24-4-2, 10 KOs) and the unbeaten NABF 175lb champion Oleksandr “The Nail” Gvozdyk (11-0, 9 KOs) will be facing each other tonight in a 10 round scheduled fight on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gvozdyk is a slight favorite to win the fight.
Bovada has the 29-year-old Gvozdyk as the favorite by the line -260 to +200 for Chilemba. They obviously feel that Gvozdyk’s punching power advantage will be the deciding factor in the fight. However, given that the odds are so close suggests that Gvozdyk is not a rock solid favorite to win the fight.
Just looking at how Gvozdyk struggled in the first two rounds of his last fight against fringe level fighter Tommy Karpency is enough to show that he doesn’t have the boxing ability or the talent to be a solid favorite over a decent level fighter like Chilemba. Gvozdyk looks to have good punching power, but he’s got a lot of problems with his game that could be exposed tonight by Chilemba.
The 29-year-old Chilemba feels he’s going to beat Gvozdyk tonight, and take his NABF title in the process.
Chilemba and Gvozdyk will be fighting on the undercard of the Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward light heavyweight clash on HBO PPV. The fight card has a start time of 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT. The location of the fight is at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Chilemba said this to ES News Reporting about his predictions on his fight against Gvozdyk and on the Kovalev vs. Ward fight tonight:
“I’m going to take that title away from him,” said Chilemba about Gvozdyk’s NABF light heavyweight title. “I’m going to take that 11-0 away from him.”
When asked who will win in the Kovalev-Ward fight, Chilemba said, “Ward.” The reason Chilemba gave for why he feels Ward will win was a wordless point to his head, meaning due to him being an intelligent fighter.
Tonight’s Chilemba vs. Gvozdyk fight will be decided upon these factors:
– Power – Gvozdyk is clearly the bigger puncher of the two. He’s got considerable power, as his record shows. However, Chilemba has enough power to get the job done if he can catch Gvozdyk with a shot that he doesn’t see coming. That’s what happened with Gvozdyk in his fight against Tommy Karpency. Gvozdyk was so concerned with his own offense that he forgot that he was fighting a guy with two hands that could punch him back.
– Speed – Chilemba is the faster fighter. Gvozdyk isn’t slow by any means, but he’s not as quick as Chilemba and he never will be. Gvozdyk wins his fights by unloading his heavy artillery and then getting out of the way of the return fire. Most of the time it works for Gvozdyk. In the case of his fight against Karpency, he got clipped with a shot and dropped.
– Ring IQ – This is an even area. Both guys are intelligent fighters. Gvozdyk isn’t going to beat Chilemba tonight based on him being the smarter fighter or the more talented guy. Gvozdyk will win based on his punching power, and possibly due to the hype connected with him. It obviously helps that Gvozdyk is a 2012 Olympic Bronze medalist from Ukraine. It also helps that Gvozdyk is signed with the promotional company Top Rank. I believe those things will give Gvozdyk a four round advantage right out of the blocks tonight. If the fight goes to the scorecards, Chilemba is going to possibly need to prove that he’s the much better fighter for him to have a chance at getting a decision, but I don’t think he’ll get it if he merely beats Gvozdyk. He might need to REALLY beat him to get out of the fight with a decision win. Getting a knockout obviously will help Chilemba immensely. I just don’t know if it’s possible for him to do that.
– Experience – Chilemba is the more experienced professional fighter. Never the less, Gvozdyk has a lot of amateur experience in Ukraine that helps him a lot in this fight. What we don’t know is how well Gvozdyk will do if the fight goes into the later rounds, considering that he’s never gone past the 6th round during his two-year pro career. When you’ve never gone past six rounds, it leaves a lot of questions that need to be answered. I think those questions will be answered tonight, because Chilemba is almost impossible to knockout. If Sergey Kovalev and Tony Bellew couldn’t knockout Chilemba, then there’s little chance that Gvozdyk will be able to get the job done. That means we’re probably going to see Gvozdyk stretched to the full 12 round distance in this fight. Will Gvozdyk still be looking strong when the fight gets into the 10th or 11th rounds like he’s looked in his short round fights? I doubt it. I think there’s a very good chance that Gvozdyk is going to look like an old car laboring to get up a big hill. Whether Chilemba can take advantage of Gvozdyk gassing out in the later rounds if the big question. Chilemba will need to switch from being defensive to being an offensive fighter during that part of the fight if he wants to stop Gvozdyk. It’s possible that Gvozdyk will have a big lead by that point in the fight, and Chilemba may need to KO him to make sure he can overcome that lead.
– Punch resistance – I’d say that Chilemba has the better punch resistance than Gvozdyk. Chilemba took some major shots in his recent fight against Kovalev that I don’t think Gvozdyk would have been able to handle without dropping for the full 10 count.
– Mobility – Chilemba is the more mobile of the two. Gvozdyk can move around the ring, but he looks slow on his feet like he’s carrying a heavy pack on his back. He does not have quick feet like Chilemba. Gvozdyk will never going to be a fast fighter on his feet. He’s someone that will move in slow circles around the ring. If his opponents are unable to handle that limited amount of movement, then he’ll beat them. If they can, then Gvozdyk will be in trouble.
It’s hard to tell for sure whether Chilemba can beat Gvozdyk. The one thing that can hurt Chilemba from winning the fight tonight is his lack of punching power. Chilemba is more of a speed guy than a puncher, and he’s not going to be able to count on knocking Gvozdyk to get the victory. If Chilemba had the kind of power fighters like Artur Beterbiev or Joe Smith Jr., Gvozdyk would be in trouble tonight. Gvozdyk would not only be the slower fighter of the two, but he’d be facing a guy with power that is as good or better than his own.
Joe Smith Jr. and Beterbiev can really crack. Gvozdyk can punch too, but he’s slow, hittable, and apparently not as sturdy in the chin department as those guys. The light hitting southpaw Karpency had Gvozdyk down in the 1st round last July in their fight at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Gvozdyk was not only down on the canvas, but he was seriously hurt. After Gvozdyk got back to his feet following the knockdown, you could see that he was in trouble. If Karpency had any kind of power or finishing ability, he would have destroyed Gvozdyk on the spot. Chilemba doesn’t appear to even have Karpency’s power, which is not a good thing.