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Anthony Mundine takes on Ghana’s Joshua Clottey in a chance for both fighter to take a crack at the top echelon in world boxing. We’ll have a live blog from 7:30pm AEDT, including round-by-round updates, plus undercard coverage of Brad Pitt vs David Aloua, Ahmed Dib, and more.
It might take you back a couple of years, but Clottey was once top of the pops. He came off a narrow split-decision defeat to Miguel Cotto, and went on to fight an entirely odd fight against Manny Pacquiao, which was stylistically awful
Remember it? It was the one where Clottey held his arms up for virtually the entire fight, and Pacquiao launched an infamous double-punch in frustration. Fans booed, and Clottey wasn’t seen again, after being put on ice by Top Rank Boxing to wait out his long contract. He swears to the Ghanian media that something was up, and that he couldn’t speak about it. Fishy.
Mundine’s camp haven’t forgotten – they’ve pinched his promo photo from that fight for this one.
What’s going against Clottey:
Since that Pacquiao fight, the tough African has only fought twice, with just one fight in the past two and a half years.
The Roar understands that his camp were fishing around for a fight in January this year – so he is fit, and ready. But the jury will be out on what he can do; no one has seen him in ages.
Here’s what we do know: ‘The Grand Master’ has never been stopped by KO. He’s never even been rocked (Cotto knocked-him down but nothing came of it). He’s very defensive-minded, and he’s been top five in the world. On looks, he’s unbeatable – with a chiseled physique.
Clottey has the ability and the class to make it quite difficult for Mundine.
Mundine’s on the up, as he continues to go down in weight. He swears that it’s taken him more than ten years to lose the rugby league player physique, and get a hardened boxer’s build. Remember when he fought Danny Green? Right now, there would be a 20kg difference in weights between Green at cruiserweight and Mundine today.
In shedding his muscular league frame, he’s progressed downwards in weight division, with light-welterweight where he has settled, with the ilk of Floyd ‘Money’ Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao in his league.
It’s a big fight for Mundine. He’s coming off a win against ‘Sugar’ Shane Mosley which propelled him into a top five contender.
And we know that Clottey is promoted by Joe DeGuardia, who also looks after Demetrius Andrade (20-0, 13KO), the young undefeated American, who is a top contender for Mayweather’s welterweight crown. Should Mundine win, he’ll be looking to fight Andrade as his next opponent, and then, who knows. It’s the boxing world: a favour for a favour. A promise; a whisper. There’s word Mundine’s been promised that fight, should he win fairly.
What’s going against Mundine? ‘The Man’ has battled a chronic hip problem for many years, and age is against him. Although he says he’s like a fine red wine, father-time beats us all down as our DNA slowly corrupts itself.
His weight-cut down to the 69.9kg limit has to take out some of his power and endurance.
Mundine stands oven seven centimetres taller than Clottey and is a bigger man across the park. Clottey is a welterweight fighting up, while Mundine is fighting down from super-welterweight. Mundine should be too big and too fast, but it’s also unlikely that he has the power to stop Clottey. And that means we should see the fight go the distance.
We can see this one going to Mundine via a combination of speed, calculated angles and fast footwork to out point Clottey over twelve rounds.
The big undercard fight actually threatens to steal the show – it’s a huge cruiserweight fight between two of the top three big men currently in the country. If boxing was bigger in Australia, it’d probably be the main pull. But this is a great
Brad Pitt is one of the more gifted and exciting boxers in Australia and had a huge knockout on the Geale-Wood undercard. Pitt won a Gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and has been at the top for awhile. Most are hoping this first is his first step to going further and searching for a world title.
His opponent, David Aloua from New Zealand, is also a medallist at the Commonwealth Games, and is a tough fighter, who has only lost to Daniel Ammann in what was a fight come-early. (In contrast, Pitt demolished Ammann in two rounds)
Pitt is the favourite but this will be a tough test for him. He’ll be intent on knocking Aloua out but the big Kiwi is not a man who will fall too easily. It’ll be an upset if Aloua will win, but it’s a fight where anything can happen.
Other bouts: The undercard is in a state of flux and we haven’t received many updates. We’ll update when we can – but for now, check out the sidebar. It appears as though a couple of up and comers will be fighting some guys with mixed reputations. But the main two fights are easily worth the watch!
[roargal]
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