Boxing News Boxing News
I thought the first four rounds of the Klitschko-Brock match a couple of weeks ago would be interesting but the rest of the fight a bore. I thought there would be a “silent contract” and both would cruise on to Klitschko gaining another spit shine on his record. But Brock showed an elusiveness I hadn’t expected, at least for rounds one through four and then the sixth, proving my pre-fight assumptions wrong.
But I think Brock may have exposed a weakness in Klitschko’s revamped Emmanuel Steward designed style. A decent defense with some head movement was problematic for the Klitschko jab-right hand combination.
I think to beat Klitschko, a fighter needs to be about a foot-and-a-half away to keep him from getting full extension on his jab, use lateral movement while rotating against that heat seeker of a right hand, negating Klitschko’s best weapons. Of course, this is easier said than done.
But Brainiac Brock seemed to handle the tall order of keeping Klitschko grounded for half the fight; were he around for the other half, perhaps he could have out-thought Wladimir.
Klitschko withheld the jab through the first few rounds until Steward told him to let it go. Brock’s nerve gave away the first round to Klitschko, but once he calmed down, his high guard and commitment to body work won him the second. For a guy who is touted as only being a better than average fighter, Brock just may have stumbled across the way to beat Wladimir Klitschko; the small, busy heavyweight just might be Klitschko’s Doomsday.
At 6 foot 1 and a half inch, Brock’s head is really the only viable target for the towering 6 foot 6 inch resident alien New Yorker. Crouching down for a small heavy would make the body an urban legend for someone of Klitschko’s stature.
Chris Byrd’s Luthorian losing effort against him is only further evidence, with pretty much a carbon copy of that knockout being applied against Brock. Wlad is reduced to being a headhunter against a smaller fighter. Byrd was uncharacteristically stationary in Klitschko’s previous fight. Add a bobbing head into the mix and Klitschko has his work cut out for him.
Brock evaded several right hands in those tentative first few rounds. Granted, once Klitschko started obeying Steward’s instruction to let his jab go, the fight turned in his favor good, but there’s reason why Brock had as much success as he did. Klitschko had trouble jabbing a single moving target and his options were severely limited.
Each time Lamon Brewster was down it was from a headshot when he fought Klitschko. And Brewster made no attempt at evading those shots. He ate them hungrily until Klitschko had served everything in the kitchen.
Most fighters probably would have a distaste for Brewster’s constitution but because his body was virtually fresh, Brewster was able to pound Klitschko into the ground like a rail spike. Now imagine what moving left and right occasionally would do while adding in a shot or two to the body every so often.
Stamina is already kryptonite to Klitschko. If a fighter can poke a hole in the tank and then take advantage once those long arms come down, it will spell success. Even if you buy into Steward’s vouching for the non-weakness of Klitschko’s chin, (note that I didn’t say “hardness”) any fighter who leaves himself wide open for a clean shot is bound for trouble. And while he may not have been able to blot out the sun for Klitschko, Calvin Brock may have written the first paragraph for such a dastardly plan.
The key word here is might. While Brock did do something interesting, in the end, he ate a left right combo, ala Lennox Lewis, that has left many an opponent in the phantom zone. But Brock did come with an unexpected surprise. I don’t dislike Klitschko and I’m not about to call him garbage, but he’s no superman, either. The way he was beaten in the past may no longer work, but nor does it make him a man of steel.
