by James Slater: Last night in Germany, a few hours before Manny Pacquiao and Joshua Clottey did their thing in Dallas, WBO cruiserweight boss Marco Huck and challenger Adam “Swamp Donkey” Richards engaged in a short but lively rumble. 25-year-old Huck, making the second defence of his belt, proved to be way too classy for the gutsy, have-a-go challenger from Tennessee; getting the win at 2-minutes and 30-seconds of the 3rd-round.
Richards was down in the 3rd-round, when a right hand followed by a shove sent him to the mat, whereupon the third man in the ring issued a count, while moments later Richards was under heavy fire and as he was on his way down a second time the ref dived in and took a tumble with the challenger as he attempted to stop the fight.
Huck is now 28-1(21). Richards, AKA Swamp Donkey, is now 23-3(15)..
As expected, the challenger came out firing right at the sound of the first bell, and Richards did force the champion to cover up and go on the defensive. Under pressure but handling it fine, “Kapn’n ” Huck came on in the last part of the exciting session.
In the 2nd-round, Huck landed with a number of hard left hands, appearing to hurt Richards. Already, the difference in class between the two men was becoming painfully apparent. But Richards was game as hell alright, constantly trying to unload some bombs. Cut on the back of the head, the 29-year-old was then caught a number of times in the 3rd-round. And even if the ref’s decision to call the challenger’s first trip to the floor a legitimate knockdown was strange (pushed as he was) the ending was only a matter of time.
Huck used both hands well last night, scoring with some hard and accurate hooks from both sides. Richards came to fight but his crudeness was his downfall. What we need to see now so as to accurately gauge how good Huck is, is for him to fight a top-ranked American; maybe even in the U.S. Certainly, the unbeaten and highly rated B.J Flores would provide Huck with an entirely different set of problems than slugger Richards did.
On last night’s under-card, unbeaten Russian big man Alexander Povetkin kept both his perfect record and his mandatory status for Ring magazine, IBF and WBO heavyweight king Wladimir Klitschko with a 5th-round stoppage of Mexico’s Javier Mora. Povetkin, working with Teddy Atlas, scored three knockdowns in all in the fight, finally forcing the referee to call a halt to the bout at 50-seconds of the 5th-round. Povetkin improved to 19-0(14). Mora, who came to fight, fell to 22-6-1(18).
In the undercard action –
Yoan Pablo Hernandez UD 12 Cesar David Crenz
Alexander Povetkin TKO 5 Javier Mora
Kubrat Pulev TKO 2 Danny Batchelder
Artur Hein TKO 8 Eric Howard
Alexander Frenkel UD 8 Michael Simms
Lukas Schulz TKO 2 Lonja Fanta
Jens Krull D 6 Samir Kurtagic
Patrick Nielsen UD 4 Alessandro Segurini