By Dave Lahr: Former WBO cruiserweight champion Enzo Maccarinelli (29-3, 22 KOs) is either incredible smart or terribly stupid by choosing the hard-punching unbeaten Russian Denis Lebedev (17-0, 12 KOs) as his first opponent after being knocked out in the 9th round in Enzo’s last fight by little known Ola Afolabi in March.
Maccarinelli will be facing Lebedev on the undercard of the World Boxing Association lightweight title fight between champion Andriy Kotelnik and British challenger Amir Khan on June 27th at the O2 Arena, in Greenwich, London.
Like Afolabi, Lebedev isn’t all that known too many boxing fans, but he does have one big asset that makes him more than competitive for the 28-year-old Maccarinelli and that’s big punching power with both hands. Lebedev’s weaknesses are also fairly obvious starting with his lack of hand speed.
Lebedev punches very slowly and although he hits hard, his lack of hand speed makes him much less a threat to knock out Maccarinelli. Lebedev also has poor defensive ability and is quite vulnerable to getting hit with right hands.
In several of the fights I’ve seen of him against low quality opposition, Lebedev was often hit with clean right hands from his opponents and I can’t recall one instant where Lebedev was able to block, duck or get out of the way of a shot thrown at him.
Additionally, Lebedev isn’t all that big, perhaps 6′ if that. The huge 6’4″ Maccarinelli will have a big height advantage over him. However, the height advantage for Maccarinelli is pretty commonplace for him as he always is the bigger fighter, and he has a way of negating his own height by opting to fight in close like he did against Afolabi.
Part of the blame for this may be Maccarinelli’s old style of fighting which was patterned after the Joe Calzaghe style, which consisted of a lot of close fighting, standing directly in front of his opponent throwing pity pat punches.
Although the style was effective for Calzaghe, partly due to the competition he faced as a super middleweight, it was a terrible style for Maccarinelli to use. For one, Maccarinelli was much taller, not nearly as fast with his hands and was facing some really good fighters in David Haye and Afolabi.
The kind of style that Maccarinelli was more suited to lesser cruiserweights where it didn’t matter how he fought, because he would win anyway using any kind of tactic. Since the defeat, Maccarinelli has switched trainers and is no longer being trained by Enzo Calzaghe, the father of Joe Calzaghe.
One would hope that Maccarinelli is learning how to use his height and reach to his advantage because he can’t continue to fight in close after suffering his latest knockout. Maccarinelli has been knocked out in two out of his last three fights and has been hurt badly in both of them.
This is why it seems like a bad move by choosing a slugger like Lebedev to fight. I don’t care how slow, small, and inexperienced Lebedev may be, he still hits very hard with both hands and will be a constant threat to Maccarinelli for as long as this one lasts.
What makes Lebedev even more dangerous is that he’s a southpaw, and that’s a style of fighter that Maccarinelli hasn’t had to face much of in his 10-year pro boxing career.
In Maccarinelli’s last fight against Afolabi, Maccarinelli was hurt by a right hand in the 3rd round and staggered badly, causing him to have to hold on. Afolabi then let Maccarinelli win most of the next four rounds until the 9th when Afolabi nailed Maccarinelli with a big right hand and took him out. As bad as the knockout was, it seems foolish for Maccarinelli fight someone with the power that Lebedev has.
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