I keep asking myself where are the real good new American heavyweights? Where are the new Holyfield’s, Tyson’s, Ali’s? Its a shame for American sports that there hasn’t been a good fighter coming out of this country in 20 years now. The sport has to rely on smaller weight classes to represent the sport at the mainstream level. Yet, we still have to deal with the fact that there’s no active heavyweight that makes everybody turn their TV’s on whenever he fights. There’s no fighter out there in the premier weight class of the sport that can actually make everybody’s head turn to our sport and that’s not good. We have Wladimir Klitshcko as the head honcho of the heavyweight ranks being champion for some 7 years now. He is a good fighter overall but he’s not as good as advertised, the only thing we need to look at is his record. He has three loses during his prime and all three where by knockout if i’m not mistaken. His loses were to the likes of Lamont Brewster, Corrie Sanders and Ross Purity, not exactly a hall of fame bound trio. The fact that he was KO’ed brutally by at least two of those three tells you about his quality. The fact that he leads the division is a scary thought.
This weekend on the Gennady Golovkin-Daniel Geale telecast we get a fight between two heavyweight hopefuls, one is American and the other, you guessed it, Cuban. Mike Perez and Bryan Jennings are scheduled to face off for the right to fight heavyweight champion of the world, Wladimir Klitshchko. Jennings is a guy who at 6’2 and 225 pounds looks, at least physically, like the heavyweight greats of past. He has one thing going against him and that’s the fact that he started late at age 23, and that is always the start of disaster. Yes, there are exceptional talents like Sergio Martinez who can manage to get away with some things, yet, they are rare. With Jennings he’s still a what if and this Saturday will mark as the test that will tell us exactly where he’s at. Mike Perez is a boxer who is often compared to Mike Tyson because of the way he fights, that is always a compliment. If he can fight half the way Tyson did, look for him to be way too much for Jennings, who in my opinion lacks the experience to deal with a savvy strong powerhouse like Perez.
Now, Jennings is the only American hope left right now. He’s young, undefeated and has a good style. The only thing going against him, at least from my point of view, is, as I said, started late. He knows this and tries to be as disciplined as possible taking his position as seriously as anybody can get, and that’s good, he doesn’t want to be the next Michael Grant. As for Perez, his recent win over Magomed Abdusalamov, has left a deep scar in his head as he has struggled to perform against Carlos Takam by only getting a draw. Putting a man in the hospital and having him go life and death can get to you and Perez is no stranger to that. Hopefully he can get over that and come back to become the fighter he’s supposed to be.
Both fighters come in undefeated and are looking to be the future of the division. We as them are hoping that good things happen with both of them, and we hope that this is the fight that catapults them to better things. If will go ahead and pick Perez to destroy Jennings inside of 5 rounds.
The RepubliKa Boxing 