By Kevin Chittenden: Heavyweight Mariusz Wach (27-1, 15 KO’s) should take a long break from boxing to recover from the one-sided 12 round beating he took from IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (59-3, 50 KO’s) last Saturday night in Hamburg, Germany. Wach was hit a reported 425 times by Wladimir in the fight with 115 of them being hard right hands to the head and the other 310 coming from powerful jabs.
That’s a lot of head shots to be getting hit with. It matters little that Wach was able to take the punches it’s still not good to absorb that many in a one-sided fight. It might been a little wiser for Wach’s corner to have thought about stopping the fight in the 8th because Wach took a ton of punishing shots in that round.
Even in the 7th, Wach was getting pummeled badly near the end of the round and he looked in bad shape when the bell sounded. The judges scored the fight 120-107, 120-107 and 119-109. The 8th round was bad enough to be seen as a 10-8 round because it was all Wladimir.
According to Bild.de, Thomas Puetz, President of the Federation of German professional boxer (BDB), wants Wach to have an MRI as a precaution to make sure he didn’t suffer any bad injuries from the fight.
Wach tried to land his big right hands and he even showed sneaky power at times. But Wladimir was ready almost every time for Wach’s big shots, and he was able to elude most of them. Wach did land a big right hand shot in the 5th that got Wladimir’s attention, but Wach was all thumbs in trying to hit Wladimir with other punches.
Wladimir instinctively clinched and ruined Wach’s only moment in the fight. Maybe if Wach had some inside boxing skills he could have punished Wlad on the inside each time he would initiate a clinch, but Wach proved to be unskilled in that area.