Weekend Wrap-up March 20
by Mike Hanson
The fight that wasn’t on television this weekend was the Heavyweight Championship between Wladimir Klitschko and Eddie Chambers. Chambers was ranked third by Ring Magazine going into the fight. Going into the fight he had a plan to beat the Ring Champion. He thought he could employ a similar strategy he used to beat the 6’7″ Alexander Dimitrenko back in July of 2009. He would use head movement to get inside and then throw fast punches to the “weak” chin of Wlad. We here is the thing, you can have whatever plan you want until you get hit in the face with the jackhammer jab of Wlad. Then all you can think about the rest of the night is how not to get hit in the face with the jab. By the time Wlad followed it with a brutal right in the second round, the fight was all but over. Wlad is so frustrating because he won’t finish an opponent. He lost two of his three fights by running out of gas. Now to over compensate he never goes for the kill, which makes him unbeatable. He picked up the tempo in the 12th after a few corners of Manny Steward pleading with him to do so and put Chambers to sleep with 5 seconds left in the fight.
ESPN Friday Night Fights caught me by surprise with Sechew Powell getting a well earned decision over Deandre Latimore avenging an earlier loss. Powell is not one of my favorites and I still am not a fan but he fought well in this fight and earned a future payday. On the undercard, newcomer Edwin Rodriguez looked impressive stopping a guy who had never been stopped before in the first round. Rodriguez is a good looking guy with an intriguing backstory I would expect to see him step up to a Shobox type of fight in the near future.
Saturday night Fox Sports Net took us on a trip to Quittersville. The night started off well with Jorge Diaz and Alejandro Lopez competing in a very entertaining scrap. Diaz dropped Lopez in the first and second round and then appeared to have something go wrong. He fought like he was hurt the rest of the fight. If ever a fight deserved to be a draw it was this one but Diaz pulled out a narrow decision. Next Junior Middleweight, Glen Tapia, looked good in his 5th fight forcing a very inexperienced Carlos Rodriguez to quit after two rounds. I am looking forward to seeing Tapia again. Next Odlanier “Fat” Solis came into the ring at 573 pounds and scared Carl Drumond into quitting after 3 rounds. Not real sure how else to describe it. Drumond was forced to re-wrap his hands which caused a 40 minute delay. Then for 3 rounds Drumond ran and threw no punches, while Jabba threw one punch here, one punch there and then Drumond just quit.
This weekend it feels as though the year in boxing is starting. Thursday night we have Fight Night Club, hopefully to be shown on FSN this time, featuring a tune-up fight for Abner Mares before he takes on Yhonny Perez. ESPN has a Shobox event on Friday Night. Steve Cunningham takes on Matt Godfrey for the Cruiserweight title vacated by Tomasz Adamek. Also Mike Mollo and Billy Zumbrun in what should be an all action bout. Saturday we get dueling cards on HBO and Showtime. HBO has Marcos Maidana against Victor Cayo. Maidana is the exciting fighter who made Victor Ortiz not like boxing anymore. Also on the card is the rematch between Juan Guzman and Ali Funeka. Hopefully, the judges get it right this time. Showtime has the first second round match of the Super Middleweight tourney between Arthur Abraham against Andre Dirrell.
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I thought it was something of note that Chambers came in at 209, 20 plus pounds less than he’s fought at before. That’s a Heavyweight Golden Era weight for his size. It didn’t seem to hurt his performance. Would he have done better porked up? No. It would be nice if we saw more of this. Good Luck!
Chambers looked pretty fit, but some commentators later said he could lose a bit more and fight as a cruiserweight. The cruisers could use a big name right now, and Chambers might find he has some real pop in the lower weight class at 195 or 200.