Boxing

Klitschko impressive in win over Brock

By Geoffrey Ciani @ Ringside: Saturday night, Wladimir Klitschko defended his newly-acquired IBF championship against undefeated challenger, Calvin Brock. For Klitschko, this was his first fight since winning the title from Chris Byrd; for Brock, this was an opportunity to continue his winning streak and a chance at capturing a portion of the world championship.

Boxing fans arrived early at Madison Square Garden in anticipation for this heavyweight championship bout. The under card featured several entertaining bouts which helped amplify the anticipation. Helping further amplify matters, Muhammad Ali returned to the scene where he had first faced Joe Frazier some twenty-five years ago. The crowd erupted into a frenzy when The Greatest arrived on the scene, providing a sensational atmosphere for a heavyweight title fight.

Early on, Brock’s defensive prowess helped dictate the pace of the fight which was both slow and awkward. Klitschko had a difficult time finding the mark with his punches due to the elusive nature of Brock’s style. It appeared that Brock’s strategy was to survive into the later rounds in an attempt to tire Klitschko out. This was evidenced by the fact that Brock attempted to go to the body while trying his best to stay out of harm’s way.

After four rounds, the fight was even at two rounds apiece. In the fifth round, however, Klitschko began finding his mark much more frequently. Working behind a snappy jab, Klitschko started mixing up his punches and he began repeatedly snapping Brock’s head back. Klitschko once again illustrated his versatility and adaptability as a prize fighter as he began to figuring out Brock’s awkward style which enabled him to get his timing down. The more Klitschko began hammering Brock with power shots, the less likely it seemed that Brock would be able to take Klitschko into the later rounds.

An unintentional head butt in round six caused a bad cut over Klitschko’s left eye, but Klitschko was clearly still in control of the bout. When round seven came around, it was more of the same, as Klitschko constantly found the mark with his power shots. Brock’s legs began to seem weary, and Klitschko stopped the bout in the seventh with a one-two combo that dropped Brock face first to the canvas. That was all she wrote. The right hand that Klitschko landed was a loud, thudding shot that could be heard echoing throughout the entire arena.

It was a good win for Klitschko, who’s looked very good in last three bouts. Wins over Peter, Byrd, and Brock help further solidify Klitschko as the division’s top dog. What’s next for Klitschko? Hopefully, a unification bout against one of the other champions. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing Wlad square off against the newly crowned WBO champion, Shannon Briggs. After all, Briggs was originally slated to face Klitschko this past Saturday, and after his impressive win against Lyakhovich, I think this is the most intriguing bout out there for Klitschko at this time.

On the under card, undefeated heavyweight, Derric Rossy, defeated a game Shannon Miller via unanimous decision for the NY heavyweight title. It was a very entertaining scrap that saw both fighters giving all they had. Also on the under card, former five-time champion, Manuel Medina, won a very close majority decision over Kevin Kelley in a bout I felt Kelley deserved victory. The preliminary bouts also saw Laila Ali batter the inexperienced Shelley Burton into submission. The overmatched Burton showed heart and courage before being stopped in the fourth round in a bout where Ali simply outclassed her inferior opponent.


Brock suffers a humiliating loss against Klitschko

By Marcelles "Quenton" Brown: The look on Calvin Brock’s face before his fight between Klitschko showed how scared he was going into the fight, and the way he stumbled around the ring in the first few minutes, proved that he was overestimating his footwork, too. He was obviously nervous and as many predicted, he lost the fight. In the first round, Brock was slipping and sliding around the ring and grabbing Klitschko’s legs like he really didn’t want to fight. At one point, Brock clumsily fell to the canvas after being knocked off balance by Wladimir.

Brock did a good job at ducking under some punches but Klitschko had the reach advantage and towered over the shorter Brock. Klitschko refused to let Brock inside and held on to his lethal right hand until he was tired of playing around with Brock. In the second round, Brock landed a few body blows but they didn’t seem to faze Klitschko much. Klitschko, for the most part, controlled the entire fight with his left and landed the right when Brock least expected it.

By the third round, it was obvious that Brock's ducking and dodging was his only defense. Klitschko hit him so hard with his left, and then followed it with a right, that it was clear to me that Brock was eventually going down. Brock seemed to be affecting Klitschko in the fourth round with some good body blows and holding him close to him but the referee broke it up and made Brock fight Klitschko head up.

Klitschko hurt Brock bad in the fifth round with two big straight right hands that caused Brock's eye to swell up. In the meantime, Klitschko suffered a cut over his left eye from an accidental head butt in the sixth round, which caused the crowd began to chant “U.S.A.” because they thought Brock caused the damage. Both fighters slipped and fell in the sixth round but got right back up. Brock landed a few more body blows and Klitschko returned the favor with a few good uppercuts before pounding on top of Brocks head with an odd looking punch.

When Klitschko suffered the cut over the eye, everyone ringside was waiting at the edge of their seats for the referee to make a call. However, the referee said that the cut was from an accidental head, but the tension was still there, nevertheless. The last time Klitschko suffered a cut from a head butt was in his fight against DaVarryl Williamson and the fight was stopped because of it. Clearly, we all wanted to see the fight continue to a victory. There was talk ringside of Brock bringing DaVarryl Williamson into his training camp as a sparring partner for some inside tips on how to stop the big man.

In the 7th round, the crowd must have known the fight was at it's high point, as they started chanting "U.S.A." as the fighters stepped to the middle of the ring. Brock continued to work on Klitschko’s body, hoping to break the giant down, but it backfired. Klitschko hit Brock with a few jabs followed by three powerful left-right cominations that sent Brock face first into the canvas. Brock beat the count but the referee stopped the fight when he stumbled to his feet with a disorientated look on his face.

Klitschko praised Brock after the fight, saying, “Brock is the best heavyweight right now, even if he doesn't hold the title.” He knew that it was his left right hook that prevailed and won him the fight and he was thankful for the victory because part of the proceeds will go to schools built in Africa. Wladimur further added that he is willing to fight anyone who holds a title and doesn’t seem to fear anyone in the boxing game right now.

From the looks of it, Wladimir no longer has the myth of the glass jaw holding him back, because he looks stronger than ever and ready to fight anybody.


Klitschko Flattens Brock

By KIRK LANG: IBF heavyweight title holder Wladimir Klitschko, fighting in his first main event at Madison Square Garden, destroyed American Calvin Brock’s dreams of becoming a champion this past Saturday with a perfect 1-2 combination in the seventh round of their scheduled 12-round affair.

A huge right hand sent Brock face-down on the canvas. Lying there as if he had been hit by a human-sized fly swatter, Brock somehow made it to his feet. However, referee Wayne Kelly, seeing Brock was on wobbly legs, called it off at the 2:10 mark. Before the fight-ending shot, Klitschko had stunned Brock earlier in the round with another straight-down-the pike right hand that followed a left hook. Klitschko closed the show in spectacular fashion but the fight itself was far from spectacular. "It wasn’t one of his better performances," said Emanual Steward, Klitscko’s trainer, "But with that said, it’s hard to be perfect every night."

Brock, a member of the 2000 United States Olympic boxing team, fought a much better fight than many so-called experts believed he would. Although the smaller man in the ring - the fight program had Brock listed at 6'2" and Klitschko at 6'6" - Brock held his own over the first four rounds and actually fought better against Klitschko than Chris Byrd, who lost his heavyweight to Klitschko in April. When Klitschko challenged Byrd for his title, Byrd was considered the best of the heavyweight title holders.

Brock proved more difficult to hit than Byrd, who has a reputation as a slick and crafty heavyweight. "The Boxing Banker" fought with a high guard and often blocked or moved out of the way of Klitschko’s offensive bursts. However, Klitschko, over the first four rounds, never really let his hands go. He fought at a measured pace, perhaps trying to avoid what happened to him when he fought Lamon Brewster in April 2004. Klitschko tattooed Brewster with an amazingly high number of punches over five rounds but eventually wiped himself out, allowing Brewster to notch a 5th round TKO.

Learning from his mistakes, Klitschko’s punch output against Brock was far more minimal than what he registered when he faced Brewster. Klitschko, 47-3 (42), controlled Brock, 29-1 (22), with his left hand by keeping it halfway extended. When he went on the offensive, it was more a push than a punch. He rarely threw a sharp, snapping jab. Although Brock often found it difficult to get past Klitschko’s long left arm, he managed to out-punch "The Steel Hammer" over the first four frames. According to the CompoBox punch statistics, Brock landed 49 of 171 punches throughout the first four rounds (29 percent) while Klitschko connected on 34 of 159 attempts (21 percent).

In the fifth round however, Klitschko began to solve the Brock puzzle and turned up the heat. He dominated the stanza with quick jabs - not seen earlier in the bout - and had more success landing his power punches, most notably the left hook. A number of jabs snapped Brock’s head back. Klitschko looked more fluid in the fifth frame and moved well on his toes between tagging Brock with jabs that seemed like they couldn’t miss their target.

While the jab was the key punch in the round, Klitschko landed two right hand bombs just before the bell to close out the stanza. The power punches elicited "oohs" from the crowd of 14,260, hundreds of whom went to the fight with small and large flags of the Ukraine to visibly show their support for Klitschko.

Although Klitschko worked the jab beautifully in the fifth, he did not keep it up in the sixth, perhaps because he was thrown off his game by a cut he suffered above his left eye. While referee Wayne Kelly ruled the cut was caused by an accident head butt, Klitschko did not know this. He said at the post-fight press conference that he thought it was caused by a punch.
Feeling a sense of urgency, and with the fear in his mind that the fight could be stopped and Brock would win by TKO, Klitschko ended matters in the next round. In losing to Klitschko, Brock saw his undefeated record disappear. Going in, he was 29-0 with 22 knockouts.

Steward pointed out that Brock was the third undefeated fighter Klitschko has faced in four fights. The only one who wasn’t undefeated was IBF champion Chris Byrd "who was the number one heavyweight champion," said Steward, who added, "So he (Klitschko) has been fighting really good fighters compared to everybody else. He’s been fighting the best fighters out there."

Brock, who was rated in the top five by the IBF, WBC and WBA, said he never saw the right hand that ended the fight, since it came immediately after Klitschko’s jab. Although Brock was disappointed he didn’t win the IBF belt, he promised he will become a world champion on another night.

"It’s not over for me," he said. "A lot of fighters have a loss, or two, or three, before they become a world champion. This was just my first one and I don’t feel bad about it. My spirits are very high because I gave my best effort and I was in there with the best in the world, as of today. I lost to the guy that’s regarded by everybody as the most legitimate heavyweight title holder."

Klitschko, asked who he wants to fight next, said, "Anybody who holds a title. It doesn’t matter who." He admitted he will not feel like a true champion until he becomes the undisputed champion.

In the night’s co-feature, Laila Ali, daughter of Muhammad, defended her WIBA and WBC super middleweight titles with a fourth-round stoppage of Shelly Burton, who was 8-2 (2) going into the fight. The official time was 1:58.

Fighting where her father had fought Joe Frazier in the "Fight of the Century" 35 years earlier, Laila Ali had a competitive opponent in Burton, of Las Vegas, NV. Burton, clearly not in awe of Ali’s reputation as the best pound-for-pound female boxer, took the fight to her taller opponent. Over the first two rounds, Ali jabbed and moved as Burton marched forward, stayed busy with her hands and kept applying pressure. In both frames, Ali didn’t really explode with shots until the final 15 seconds or so. In the third round however, she got her power punches going earlier. Halfway through the stanza, she nailed Burton with a succession of big right hands. In the latter part of the round, Ali willingly fought off the ropes near her corner and got the better of Burton. When Burton stepped away from Ali, Laila waved her in, as if to say, "Don’t move away, I’m right here."

Ali also did some fighting off the ropes in the fourth round and just like when her father got off the ropes to knock out heavyweight king George Foreman in Zaire, Africa in 1974, Laila Ali’s opponent would see the fight get stopped when "She Bee Stingin’ " got off the ropes and launched a quick -fisted assault. Ali landed three or four right hands that had Burton trying to move away from the leather coming at her. However, her attempt to evade Ali’s attack proved futile. A flurry of right hands and left hooks, with Burton not returning fire, forced Arthur Mercante, Jr. to wave the fight off. Mercante’s father - Arthur Mercante, Sr - refereed Ali-Frazier I, which took place in the same arena.

Laila Ali, who improved to 23-0 (20), said of Burton’s performance, "Up until that moment (the knockout), I thought that she did a good job."

 


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