By Jim Maltzman: Mairis Briedis and Yuniel Dorticos will wrap up the WBSS season II cruiserweight final this month on September 26 after two years of working on getting to this point.
WBC cruiserweight champion Briedis (26-1, 19 KOs) and IBF champ Dorticos (24-1, 22 KOs) will be battling it out without fans at the Plazamedia Broadcasting Center, in Munich, Germany.
The winner of the fight will capture the Muhammad Ali Trophy. U.S boxing fans can watch the Briedis vs. Dorticos fight on DAZN on September 26. Briedis is the favorite in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, but Dorticos could pull off an upset.
Briedis had the tougher road
To earn his spot in the WBSS final, Mairis defeated Noel Gevor and Krzysztof Glowacki. Neither fight was pretty to watch, and Briedis is lucky to have won them.
The Gevor fight was a controversial one in the eyes of some boxing fans, as they felt that Briedis, the tournament #1 seed, didn’t do enough to earn the victor. Nevertheless, the judges gave Briedis a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 114-112, 115-111, and 116-111.
It’s taken two years to get to this point for Dorticos, 34, and Briedis. Both guys have had two fights apiece to get to the World Boxing Super Series cruiserweight final, and there’s been a little drama along the way.
The Cuban knockout artist Dorticos is taking part in his second WBSS tournament. He competed in the season 1 WBSS tourney in 2017 and 2018, but Murat Gassiev eliminated him in the semi-finals in getting stopped in the 12th round.
That was a thrilling fight to watch due to back and forth action.
In season II WBSS tourney, Dorticos has beaten Mateusz Masternak and Andrew Tabiti to get to the final. Dorticos’ 12 round decision win over Masternak in October 2018 was a narrow victory.
The scores were 116-112, 115-113, and 115-113. Boxing News 24 had Dorticos edging Masternak by a 115-113 score. In hindsight, it was not a good idea for Dorticos to take on such a good fighter in his first fight back from being knocked out by Gassiev in February 2018.
“The KO Doctor is back and ready to prescribe another dose of pain and take the Muhammad Ali Trophy back to Miami!” said Dorticos.
Dorticos has the power
Briedis is going to need to watch out for the right hand from the ‘KO Doctor” Dorticos because he’s dangerous with that punch. He also has a lot of power in his left hand as well, so Briedis will need to be on guard at all times.
He can’t let Dorticos land his power shots with any regularity if he wants to win this fight.
In Dorticos’ last fight against Andrew Tabiti on June 15, 2019, he knocked him out cold with a beautiful right hand in the 12th.
Tabiti was down for a long time after getting hit with that punch. If Dorticos lands a similar shot on the chin of Briedis, he could KO him in the same way.
The Achilles heel of Dorticos is his low stamina. He runs out of gas in the later rounds, and when that happens, he’s vulnerable.
Murat Gassiev took advantage of Dorticos’ conditioning issues in stopping him in the 12th round of the season 1 WBSS tournament.
In Dorticos’ fight against Masternak, he faded badly in the second half, and that match turned out to be a difficult one for him.
Mairis lucky not to be disqualified against Glowacki
Briedis’ last fight against Krzysztof Glowacki, previous year in June, was a comedy of mistakes by the referee, who couldn’t hear the bells ending the rounds over the noise from the crowd.
The fight was an interesting one to watch. Glowacki landed a textbook rabbit punch in the 2nd round, which resulted in Briedis elbowing him to the head. It didn’t look like a hard elbow, but it a good enough to send Glowacki down.
Briedis was then penalized a point for the low blow. When the action resumed, an angry-looking Briedis tore into Glowacki, and the two slugged it. Moments later, Briedis dropped Glowacki with a nice right hand to the head with 10 seconds left in the round.
A badly shaken Glowacki got back to his feet, and the referee Robert Byrd restarted the action. Almost immediately, the bell sounded to end the round. However, Byrd didn’t hear, and apparently neither did the two fighters because they continued to slug it out.
Briedis then dopped Glowacki again with another right hand. Still not realizing the round had ended, Byrd gave Glowacki a standing eight count. It was only then that Glowacki’s team alerted Byrd and made him understand that the round had ended.
In fairness to Byrd, it was deafening and hard to hear
anything due to the crowd. It wasn’t just Byrd that didn’t hear the bell. The fighters didn’t hear it either because they kept punching.
In the third round, Briedis finished off the still hurt Glowacki by knocking him down again almost immediately. The referee promptly stopped the fight.
Although Briedis stopped Glowacki in the 3rd round to win the WBO title, there was a rematch ordered by the World Boxing Organization due to errors made by the referee.