Huck-Afolabi, Dimitrenko-Pulev & Stieglitz-Hamdan on Saturday

By Boxing News - 05/01/2012 - Comments

Image: Huck-Afolabi, Dimitrenko-Pulev & Stieglitz-Hamdan on SaturdayBy Jim Dower: This Saturday night, WBO cruiserweight champion Marco Huck will be defending his title against WBO interim cruiserweight champion Ola Afolabi at the Messehall, in Erfurt, Germany in a loaded card with three really good fights.

Alexander Dimitrenko will be fighting Kubrat Pulev for the vacant EBU heavyweight title, WBO super middleweight champion Robert Stieglitz defends his title against #15 WBO Nadar Hamdan.

Huck, 27, lost his last fight against WBA heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin last February in a surprisingly good performance from Huck. He didn’t win the fight, but he fought well enough to where you can make an argument that he deserved the decision. Huck found out the hard way, however, that heavyweights can wear you down with their shots.

Huck also found out that it’s hard to win rounds when he’s trying to steal them in the last 30 seconds of the round instead of working hard for the full three minutes. That’s a problem that he could have against Afolabi if Huck isn’t active enough. He can’t keep fighting like Arthur Abraham where he just holds back until the last part of each round to try and steal them. It works with judges that are easily influenced by the last things that they see, but good judges ignore fighters that by practice look to steal rounds rather than work hard.

Afolabi, 32, lost a close 12 round decision to Huck three years ago in December 2009. He’s since changed his fighting style and has won his last five bouts. Afolabi is more of a boxer/puncher now rather than just looking to slug. It makes him a lot tougher to beat because he defeat you a number of ways rather than just one like before.

The Stieglitz-Hamdan fight figures to be a mismatch, as Hamdan is a last minute replacement for George Groves, who injured his nose while training for the Stieglitz bout. Hamdan, 38, has lost three round of his last five bouts and five out of his last nine fights. The real big question here is why the World Boxing Organization have Hamdan ranked at number #15? With that many loses all coming in a short period of time, Hamdan hardly deserves a #15 ranking by the WBO, and definitely doesn’t deserve a title shot. However, Hamdan unfortunately is the same kind of fighter that Stieglitz has been exclusively fighting since he picked up the WBO title in 2009.



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