Krzysztof Wlodarczyk of Poland will be attempting to defend his WBC cruiserweight championship belt this Friday, June 21 against Rakhim Chakhkiev of Russia in Moscow.The 31-year-old veteran Wlodarczyk has an impressive record of 47-2-1 with 33 KOs while Chakhkiev is undefeated in his young career so far at 16-0 with 12 KOs to his name.
Wlodarczyk is on a pretty good roll at the moment, as he hasn’t lost since May 2007. His last defeat came at the hands of American Steve Cunningham by the way of majority decision. Wlodarczyk likes to keep his guard up pretty high and takes all incoming shots quite well with a solid chin. He stands 6-1 and has pretty good power of his own.
Chakhkiev is now 30 years old and he won a gold medal for his home land at the 2008 Summer Olympics. He’s a strong southpaw who is 6-feet tall and turned pro back in 2009. He’s got good power, fast hands and moves his head out of danger pretty well. He’s relatively inexperienced as a pro, but his amateur background more than makes up for it.
Wlodarczyk can be outboxed, and we’ve seen examples of this against Francisco Palacios and Danny Green. He also lets himself get outworked on occasion, but he still rarely loses a fight. He proved against Green and Palacios that he’s never out of a fight, no matter how badly hurt he seems to be. Wlodarczyk is able to dig down deep if he’s behind on the scorecards or hurt.
The best way to rectify this dangerous situation, though, is to make sure he puts in a consistent effort right from the opening bell and not take any rounds off. Chakhkiev has a lot of skill and if he’s allowed to dictate the pace of the bout the champion will find himself in trouble once again. If he does get behind the eight ball, Wlodarczyk may find it to be too big of a hill to climb to come back against his Russian challenger.
Chakhkiev is a little younger, faster and powerful. He’s also a more skilled boxer then Wlodarczyk. Still, this is going to be a tough bout to win. The challenger will need to land harder and faster combinations and more of them. He may try to use his superior boxing skills rather than get into some sort of slugfest. This means he’ll try to keep Wlodarczyk unsettled and off balance as much as he can be moving in, landing punches, and then moving out of range.
Since Wlodarczyk can take a good punch this fight should go the distance, but there’s a good chance there’s going to be a new champion at the end of 12 rounds.
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