Heavyweight Seeded Tournament: Who Wins?

Quarter Finals
Agit Kabayel SD Filip Hrgovic
Moses Itauma UD Martin Bakole
Daniel Dubois KO Lawrence Okolie
Fabio Wardley TKO Zhilei Zhang

Semi Finals
Agit Kabayel SD Moses Itauma
Fabio Wardley KO Daniel Dubois

Final
Kabayel UD Wardley

 

Corrected.

 

I can’t wait to see most people picking Itauma.

I’d say Dubois is the most proven fighter in that specific bracket but I worry about whether he has the stomach to deal with Wardley.

 

What has Okolie even done to prove he would beat Dubois?

 

Quarter Finals

Agit Kabayel UD Filip Hrgovic
Martin Bakole KO Moses Itauma (50-50)
Daniel Dubois UD Lawrence Okolie
Fabio Wardley KO Zhilei Zhang (60-40)

Semi Finals

Agit Kabayel KO Martin Bakole
Daniel Dubois KO Fabio Wardley

Final

Agit Kabayel UD Daniel Dubois

 

Hope you're wrong... But you're right with that ko. That punch was way worse than the one that made fury dance sround the ring.

Dubois was already spent and moved into a full force shot he didn't see. Worst case scenario. Dubois has an amazing chin the way he was Walking through the ring afterwards

 

Agree with this right up to final - then it's a toss-up 50/50 for me, Dubois is the more proven but can be stopped or pushed to quit, where Kabayel we don't really know yet. Kabayel's on a good streak, but Dubois isn't ancient and slow like Zhang or journeyman level like Makh or Sanchez...
I suspect either Dubois on points or Kabayel by stoppage are most likely, but all results are plausible IMHO.

 

What makes me pick Kabayel is that to me he seems more versatile and better from a technical and tactical perspective.

He can fight in different ways and is determined and tough and strong minded as we have seen against ancient zhang that put former '#2' parker on his butt multiple times before gassing while against Kabayel he wasn't even long enough in the fight to gas on his own.

Dubois has a strong jab though and can not be underestimated with his size, speed, power and aggression. Many would have folded under the attack he was trying to put on usyk.

It's true that kabayel hasn't fought against a young prime fighter like Dubois, but the way he fought Zhang who arguably won against parker and destroyed Joyce twice, he almost fought to zhang's strength, which feels like a similar pointer as to how strong kabayel is.

At a time where wardley has the best current win against parker but not much else, dubois has multiple losses against usyk and wins with accepted fouls and kabayel hasn't fought on the highest level and fights a noname next - I have to take into account what I see displayed by each fighter. And with kabayel I see a bit more than with dubois right now. But not by a lot.

I see dubois making kabayel more cautious, but kabayel having superior movement and positioning and determination and ultimately punch placement. His body shots might not be enough to stop dubois here, but slow him down enough to win on points.

 

I can’t see how anyone goes against Itauma.

Middleweight speed with superior Heavyweight pop.

I’ve been watching heavyweight boxing for over 30 years and I haven’t seen anything like it.

He’ll flay the current crop, including Usyk, given the opportunity.

 

There's plenty of fair points in here.

I think Kabayel tends to get a bit of the benefit of unbeaten bias - guys with losses will usually get underrated as compared with similar level guys who haven't fought enough good competitive fights to taste defeat yet...

And Kabayel, for all he looked impressive doing it, still has a resume that rests heavily on Zhang - whilst heavy handed, Zhang is literally 50/50 against anyone remotely decent.

It's just risky banking on someone with so little depth - he looks like he's probably up there, it's just hard to tell.

 

When he starts doing that to guys who aren't completely shot, or were never any good, then people will stop "sleeping on" Itauma - until then, he's only proved he can look spectacular against guys without a pulse.

Any combination of attributes, no matter how impressive, is only as good as the levels it's proven at - and at the moment, Itauma is only proven as a 2-round domestic destroyer.