By Kevin Chittenden: Making his 10th defense of his World Boxing Organization cruiserweight title champion Marco Huck (35-2-1, 25 KO’s) took a real beating from challenger Firat Arslan (32-6-2, 21 KO’s) in successfully defending his belt by a 12 round unanimous decision tonight at the at the Gerry Weber Stadium, Halle, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. The judges scored it 115-113, 115-113, 117-111(!).
However, the decision was met with boos from the large crowd, many of which thought that the 42-year-old Arslan had done more than enough to deserve the decision. It’s hard to argue with that because Arslan landed the cleaner punches in virtually every round of the fight. He was snapping Huck’s head with uppercuts and had his nose swollen up and looking broken. Huck’s face was red from the many shots he absorbed in the fight.
Huck did throw a lot more punches but many of them were picked off on the gloves of Arslan, and the ones that did land had no affect on him. Arslan was never hurt and wasn’t slowed down in the least by Huck’s constant shots.
Huck had more success in the last half of the fight with his body punching, but it didn’t change the fact that Arslan was landing the head snapping shots that judges normally can’t ignore. In this case it looks like they did.
Huck didn’t look like the same fighter that gave WBA heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin all he could handle earlier this year in a close 12 round decision loss. It could be that the punishment that Huck absorbed in that fight and his subsequent war with Ola Afolabi has deteriorated his skills somewhat. Huck didn’t look as powerful in this fight as he had in those two bouts, and he looked really worried through most of it.
I personally scored the fight for Arslan by four rounds, but I’m not surprised that Huck was given the decision. He’s won a couple of fights against Afolabi and Denis Lebedev that I felt he deserved to lose. It just goes to show you how hard it is to get a decision over him in Germany.
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In undercard boxing fights:
Dustin Dirks UD 12 Cleiton Conceicao
Edmund Gerber UD 8 Darnell Wilson
Tyron Zeuge UD 6 Matingu Kindele
Robert Woge TKO 5 Serhiy Demchenko
David Graf UD 8 Blanchard Kalambay
Enrico Koelling UD 6 Ivan Maslov