Quote Originally Posted by Bilbo
I was looking in the BBC Sport forums and the general consensus is that Skelton is going to get annihilated.

I'm really not so sure. I'm actually considering a bold bet in the prediction comp on him upsetting Chagaev.

Everyone seems to be rating Skelton based on his one bad performance against Michael Sprott.
But that was probably his worst ever performance and he still won easiliy, apart from one blind judge anyways.

Chagaev beat Valuev fair enough but his record apart from that is hardly a stellar one.

Scraping a win over John Ruiz can hardly be considered as an argument for 'greatness'.

He struggled with Vladimir Virchis too.

Skelton imo is still unbeaten, the judges robbed him in the first Williams fight and he responded by dancing around him and winning virtually all the rounds in the rematch.

I don't actually see anyone better than Williams on Chagaev's record, unless you count Valuev and Ruiz

When you add in that Skelton will likely outweigh his opponent by at least 20 lbs I think the rough house, brawling tactics of Skelton could really mess up Chagaev's gameplan.

I think Chagaev is the justifiable favourite but I really think Skelton has a live chance in this bout.

I'd say it's 60/40 in Chagaev's favour.
When he fought Vladimir Virchis, Chagaev's mother had heart surgery one night before the fight. Chagaev come into the bout without sleeping for 24 hours so i think he done well considering how tired and how messed up he felt at that time. And he didn't scrap a win over Ruiz, he clearly beat Ruiz comfortably the SD was a joke Chagaev easily won the fight on points.

As for Skelton he has never impressed me, he is a tough mauling type of fighter i'll give him that but other than that he is pretty weak in most areas. He should of had about 2 points deducted in the 1st Williams fight he was so dirty in that fight and he was allowed to get away with far too much. And you talk highly how Skelton beat Williams easily in the rematch but come on, Williams was 288 he looked like a beached whale and Williams was even going off balance when he threw a punch thats how poorly conditioned he was. So Skelton out pointing an uninterested beached whale Williams didn't impress me one bit.

Chagaev isn't great but he is good enough to handle someone like Sprott, Chagaev will win a UD 117-111, 118-110, 117-111.