Thursday, December 16, 2010

Marco Huck vs Denis Lebedev

Marco Huck vs Denis Lebedev live stream, PolSat Boxing Night, Yoan Pablo Hernandez vs. Ali Ismailov, Alexander Povetkin vs. Nicolai Firtha. If you are going to catch one European fight this year, make it this one. I may be sticking my neck out a little far on this one, but this is the rare European fight that has fireworks written all over it, and it has the potential to be the best prominent fight between big men since Adamek-Cunningham. After a long streak of beating good competition, Huck is a top-two cruiserweight in the world. His aggressive style leaves a fair number of openings for opponents, but between a good chin, good power and a ton of swagger, nobody has been able to capitalize. Denis "White Swan" Lebedev is a former Russian special ops (and frequent Fedor Emilianenko sparring partner) who fights out of the southpaw stance, has dynamite in both fists, and is about as good of a finisher as anyone in the sport right now. As far as I know, neither fighter has ever been down before, although both men will try to change that. Hernandez-Ismailov is a WBA cruiserweight title eliminator. While no cruiserweight super six is officially taking place, it appears that Sauerland is having all of its top cruisers fight each other anyway, which is nice. Povetkin deserves whatever flack he gets for taking this kind of fight. Before recently upsetting Tony Grano, Firtha lost three in a row to Tye Fields, Manuel Quezada and Neven Pajcik.