Hrgovic Itauma; Vianello

The day before yesterday, a sad chapter in boxing history unfolded. Filip Hrgovic, an excellent Croatian boxer, defeated Itauma Moses for a vacant IBF heavyweight title; for us, Moses remains the best super prospect of the moment… and more…

Boxers can lose—it’s part of the risks of the trade—but it’s how they lose that needs to be analyzed… The match was going the younger Englishman’s way until a few right hands landed on his face, and from there, a decline that came to an end in the ninth round… Given that the Croatian went down in the second round… for fans, this is part of the risk, but for the experts, Moses’ game plan is something to forget… okay, it’s fine to work the distance and disrupt the action, but if you throw punches and then freeze in front of a man taller and bigger than you—who competed in the Olympics and won a medal—you have to ask yourself some questions… You CAN’T stand in front of a guy like that, freeze after the flurry, and take that right hand… especially if you have heavy hands but lack explosive power, and your opponent is a tenacious taker of punches… just look at his face at the end of the match. The blame for this spectacle lies with the coach who devised that terrible game plan—one that initially worked… but when the opponent’s ability to take a beating becomes evident and he starts to come back, you have to change tactics… and above all, he failed to prevent a defeat that was foreshadowed from the 5th round onward… Dubois met the same fate…

…it’s true, he’s the world champion now… but they could have spared him a terrible punishment like the one suffered by a phenomenon like Itauma—in our opinion, it’s truly a shame… The message that comes across is: there are several boxers, some of whom are potentially excellent, so let’s put on a show and see what happens… The problem is that if you’re 21, you’re a phenomenon but you don’t have a Plan B… This is what happens… it’s entirely the coaches’ fault, not the boxer’s!!!

Not to mention the moments leading up to the towel being thrown in, and not to mention the referee—if he’d counted him out, maybe it would have ended differently… but in those moments, time flies so fast that these professionals should know what to do…

Vianello fought on the same night… a draw for him… his tactical approach against a modest boxer was terrible… if you don’t land your combinations and if you don’t throw that right hand properly, everyone looks like a lion in the face of a boxer who has great potential but seems to be moving backward instead of forward… Tactics are key to victory, but we Italians know all this, and yet these are the results… I feel bad for Guido, whom we adore…

Boxing is ruthless, and we’ll never stop saying it…

image google