21.05.05 – By Lee Hayes: Andrew Golota will be facing Lamon Brewster for the WBO Heavyweight Championship this evening. Many favor Golota to unseat Brewster, because of Golota’s superior skill, and frankly…Brewster’s obvious lack of it. It is my conclusion that Golota cannot win tonight… even if he gets a victory. Let me explain:
Golota is not mentally strong enough to be a champion of any significance. He has quit (in his bout with Michael Grant), been knocked out by Lennox Lewis in the first round. It’s hard to determine whether he was KO’D or quit against Mike Tyson, because it appeared to be somewhere in between. I will give you that Golota has looked sharp since he has launched his comeback, and appears to have more mental focus than ever. But after watching Golota have a panic attack before he entered the ring against Lewis, and watching him basically quit and disqualify himself against Riddick Bowe in successive matches, I have given up on Andrew Golota, as ever being anything more than a talented head case. He has disappointed his fans too many times.
Oh, he should win his fight tonight against Brewster. It would be hard for him not to. Brewster throws his punches mile wide, slow enough to be timed by a calendar, and his skills are brutish, to be kind. Golota, for the most part, keeps his shots straight, and tight. But it’s not Golota’s offense that is the problem. He’s always had an excellent offense. It’s how his brain deals with pressure. So the question regarding this fight is simply whether or not Brewster can put anything that looks like pressure on Andrew, in order to make him quit or foul out.
Brewster, for his part, is a nice enough guy. He’s unassuming, and seems to be having the time of his life – riding the current string of success that has suddenly surrounded him. He works hard and fights the hardest way possible, to walk in plodding, absorbing punches and hoping to slow your opponent down. There is no more difficult way to fight, and Brewster knows no other way to box. It’s going to be a difficult night for Lamon, because his strategy is to absorb punishment and not apply pressure until later in the fight, and Golota’s only problem is facing pressure. Brewster looked close to being stopped early in his infamous fight with Wladimir Klitschko (I thought the fight could have been stopped a few rounds before Wladimir mysteriously dropped to the canvas). If Golota can mount a non-stop attack from the first round until the third or fourth rounds, he should be able to stop the late starter, Brewster.
Still, if Brewster does ride this roller coaster of success he is currently on, and decides to start believing in his punch more, he might, just maybe come out in the first round bombing and catch Golota off guard and stop him in earlier. Either way, I do not think this fight will go the distance. It shouldn’t.
The point of this article is that Golota can not ‘win,’ even if he gets a victory in this fight, because his owning the WBO belt alone will not mean anything until he attempts to unify with another belt. The problem lies there, as Golota has already proven that he could not best IBF title holder Chris Byrd, or WBA titlest (newly re-appointed) John Ruiz. It seems very unlikely that he could best Vitali Klitschko either. Golota will always fold against superior opposition, such as Bowe, Lewis, Tyson and even Grant. Vitali Klitschko is better than Grant, and only a step or two bellow the other three. I believe that Vitali would KO Golota in the first or second round. So you see, even if Golota wins tonight – and as I’ve said, he should- it will really mean nothing, and the WBO belt will further it’s reputation as a ‘minor belt’ amongst the die hard boxing fans, because we already know that he is incapable of beating any of the three ‘major’ belt holders.
None of this should take away from what is about to take place in only a few hours. The fight itself should be action packed and entertaining while it lasts. Golota believes he is redefined in his comeback, and maybe he will prove me wrong and show that he is. Brewster is on top of the world, now that he has found success that seemed very improbable only two short years ago, and he may get better as the expectations rise both by himself and the boxing fans. This should be a really good one guys. In the words of the best referee of our generation, Mills Lane, Alets get it on!.
This writer welcomes your thoughts or comments, either posted here or at: leezraven@yahoo.com