Saturday in Almaty. WBO International middleweight title at stake, Ïsläm's first defense. Currently the WBO ranks Ïsläm #8 and Kautondokwa #9 at MW. Neither man is ranked top 15 by any org in the "Big 3". Kautondokwa has fought once since he stepped in one year ago to replace Billy Joe Saunders and challenge Demetrius Andrade for the WBO middleweight title, unsuccessfully. He represents either the biggest step up in class of Ïsläm's career, or his second toughest outing professionally, depending on where you rate Brandon Cook.
Don't forget, Kautondokwa hurt Andrade in the second round of their fight, and got up off the canvas 4x in as many rounds before the match lapsed into the usual Boo-Boo dullness over the final eight. Also, it appears there are no uploads of that fight on YT, meaning that my ringside live tweets are the only extant video available online. https://www.boxingforum24.com/threa...lter-panduleni-kautondokwa-rbr.617484/page-40
I see you've got the Uyghur netting the KO; so you weren't as impressed with the Namibian's resiliency as I? (doesn't help that I met Walter in person at the weigh-ins and he was really cool, makes it hard to root against him, although I do think Ïsläm should comfortably outbox him)
Nah, not really. It had less to do with Walter's resiliency than it had to do with Andrade's skittishness and fear of walking into something big again, and as usual, not taking any risks and being content to bore the audience out of their skulls cruising to an easy UD. The fact that he went down 4 times is actually pretty shocking, I thought he'd be tougher than that. He seems like a cool guy, but I think Kanat walks right through him, possibly gets dropped himself in the process, but will recover and polish him off in 5.
No way kanat is back in action, damn been a while , this guys name was a bit hot back then his name was always linked to Kirkland, and canelo as potential showdowns . This dude was in the mix @154 damn I almost forgot about him. Well Walter is bigger and kanat is naturally a 154 pounder I'm hoping islam Carries his power up to 160 and blows Walter out of the water in an impressive fashion. I might be fanboying here ,but I'm hoping he makes some noise at 160.
Should be a good fight and I do remember the Andrade borefest after dropping his opponent four times he actually looked poor thereafter. I'm picking Kanat Islam as I'm a fan of the guy,not sure about middleweight though.
