Bellews Performance?

After getting smashed in that way Tony will need to find a new ring personality. Maybe he could try the humble approach. Nobody will be wanting to hear the bollocks he spouted before the Stevenson fight. But does he have it within him to change hsi personality and be a bit more respectful pre-fight? Only time will tell

 

Alarm bells were ringing when he said if the fight had gone past the 9th round he'd be going out and swinging for the fences because he couldn't let it go to the scorecards.

If you can't let it go to the judges then why not just go out like a wildman and throw everything at Adonis for the first 3-4 rounds when there was more in the tank rather than boxing for 9 rounds but thinking you were gonna have to go for it big style anyway ?

 

His over confidence is part of his downfall. He's going in with guys he believes he's going to smash and beat up and then gets in there and is probably confused as to how they are outboxing him and hurting him, that's gotta be disheartening during the fight. Overall though he was never good enough to beat Stevenson, most of us knew that, no shame in that. He definitely needs a new mental approach though, hopefully the Stevenson fight teaches him to be more humble in the future.

 

What does bellew do? He wants to be a world champion .. people question his confidence, ok he lost to the better man on the night but if he approached this fight with a lack of confidence he would have been made out a lot worse by the boxing public. Crazy how this country builds it's fighters up them knocks them down massively when they are defeated.

 

There's confidence and then there's over-confidence, bellew said he was going to beat up and hurt Stevenson, when he got in the ring and suddenly Stevenson was hurting him and outboxing him what do you think that did to his mindset? It's got to be immediately deflating not understanding why this guy who you were convinced you could just beat up and bully is completely doing you over.

It's not about being timid or unconfident, it's about being realistic about your own abilities and having confidence to use them to exploit your opponents weaknesses. Bellew is so overconfident that he can't even realistically evalute his own strengths, and therefore how to use them against his opponents. He's convinced he's a wrecking machine and is going to batter everyone, so his over confidence is quite clearly hindering him.

None of that would have won him the fight against Stevenson but it would of helped him do better I'm sure.

 

Fair point mate

 

I thought Tony did as well as he could.....I think Stevenson and kovalev and Golotkin are getting that Tyson aura around them when fighters are beaten before they get in the ring!

 

Bellew was well out of his depth!

 

From watching it, definitely think he looked to begin off the back foot in order to frustrate Stevenson then try and step it up in the latter rounds.

Thing was, when he was boxing from the back foot Stevenson was able to nullify his game plan. I actually felt that when Bellew held is ground and let his shots go whilst keeping his defense in tact that's when he had the most success.

 

I know a lot of people have a marmite type reaction to Tony.

But I for one find his build ups interesting. I think he's been needing the move up for some time. After all he was the ABA heavyweight champion. He has a good pedigree however he's always looked drained to me. I think the Clev fight was closer than the judges scored it. I had that fight as a draw. Yes Stevenson beat him, but there's no shame in that - he seems to be a solid fighter.

I hope he moves up to CW, I'd certainly be a lot more excited by that prospect.

 

Just watched it again a few hours ago because a m8 came over who hadn't seen it yet, His performance is even worse than i remembered it to be from watching it live. Just didn't get into the fight and didn't really give it ago. Lost every round easily and then got brutally stopped.

If you had asked Tony before the fight what the worst result would be, i think that would have been it. at least if he would have had a go and got knocked out early he wouldn't be able to question himself on whether he gave himself a chance of winning.

Stevenson had been chinned before and early, he should have just gone for that chance.

 

His "performance" or lack of it, was shocking, he didn't even attempt to win, he slipped and slided and creeped and crawled for 6 rounds and then got KTFO, you suppose to be a warrior!! I wanna see f-ckers go out on their shields!! :deal

 

I thought a few of the rounds he looked quite good so I think saying his performance was shocking is wrong imo,

 

He was too cautious imo, you could see the plan was to take him into the later rounds but I've never really understood that tactic tbh, especially if your not particularly doing much to take anything out of your opponent, he should have surprised Stevenson and jumped on him early and tried to test his chin before letting Stevenson get into a rhythm.

 

move up to cruiserweight on a massive leap up to where bigger boys hit harder