Mairis Briedis vs. Yunier Dorticós Pao

Great fight with two contrasting styles that match up well with each other.

I've got Briedis on points in a tough hard-fought war that sees both men ship their fair share of punishment. I expect the more quality work to be coming from Briedis and the sheer attritional stuff to come from authentic Dorticos. I guess that doesn't take a genius to figure out given the way they both fight; the intriguing part for me comes from how well authentic Dorticos can maintain his workrate in the face of crisp stunning blows from Briedis, who'll be jabbing and moving around a lot and probably outboxing him early on.

Briedis doesn't have the power of Gassiev or the high guard style that saw a lot of authentic Dorticos's work being ineffective in that fight, but his movement, combinations and workrate is a lot better than Gassiev's which changes the dynamic quite a bit. In the Gassiev fight authentic Dorticos wasn't given much opportunity to get through with scoring blows, given how tough and water tight Gassiev's guard was, and had to resort to just throwing the kitchen sink at him, which didn't pay off in the end. He'll have a lot more opportunities to catch Briedis, but he'll need to be able to shut Briedis's lateral and in-out movement down, so his workrate isn't likely to be as high. That means his individual shots need to be tighter and sharper to make them count.

Briedis for his part can't afford to keep things too open and will need to pick his shots better while remaining defensively sound. He has the power to stun authentic Dorticos but I'm not sure if he has the power to put him away unless he catches him with an absolute peach of a shot. That means he'll need to try to control authentic Dorticos with his jab and footwork, while punishing him for any sloppy mistakes he makes, and while I think he'll do that fine early on there's a possibility of the tide turning later on in the fight when conditioning comes into play. I think he's smart enough to realise that and might devise a sort of strategy of two halves to deal with more survival tactics for later on down the stretch.

Great fight though, and whoever wins it is a legit top ten HW automatically, and clear CW number one.

 

KO via elbow? Or knee? What you reckon?

Silly stuff aside it will be a great fight.

 

Good fight. Other than Wilder/Fury 2 I can’t think of any other fight coming up that I’m more excited for than this one. Breidis decision

 

I'm a big believer in Dorticos. Fancy him by some sort of stoppage but I've been wrong making that same pick before.

 

I love this fight. Both these guys can flat out fight. This will definitely be a fan friendly fight. I’m going to put some top dollar on Breidis but I’m happy to lose if Dorticos can get the KO. I can’t see Dorticos beating Breidis on points and usually when you get two of the best in a division fight there isn’t a knockout. Breidis on points for me.

 

Looking forward to a classic

 

Briedis on points.

Dorticos is crude and you need make some glaring mistakes to get caught by him

 

Dorticos is vastly over rated. He doesn't have a high boxing IQ. His Cuban lineage doesn't mean ****, because he wasn't an upper echelon guy just like Gonzalez, and Barrera weren't. He has a jab and right hand that he uses in a fairly repetative manner.

 

Yeah don't see an argument for anyone else really. The Ghoul will be the only real threat to the winner. Won't totally count Makabu out either but I don't see him standing up to either guys power.