*** The official Denis "The White Swan" Lebedev strategic bombing flight path! ***

One thing I've never been crystal clear on: if a title changes hands, does the new champion inherit the mandatory challenger from their predecessor?

In other words, should Matt Godfrey spring an upset over Huck, would Lebedev still be first in line for Godfrey to defend against? If there was an immediate rematch clause he would obviously have to wait...but other than that? Would there be a re-shuffling of the WBO rankings, and a new eliminator (rendering Lebedev-Alexeev null and void)? Is the mandatory position beholden to the individual champion, or to the belt itself? :think

 

: ibutt

(take out the space)

 

Yep, it would be an excellent styles match-up with plenty of drama...it would gain international attention if they both keep dominating in the meantime, and above all it would be a unification (assuming Lebedev beats the Huck-Godfrey winner and Cunningham hangs on to his IBF title). Easily the biggest CW fight in some time.

 

I really don't think this opinion is putting the horse before the cart, as some have suggested.

Lebedev's power is legitimate. So are Huck's flaws...and his improvement under Wegner is really not all that significant. The same flaws are pretty much still there.

 

Graham Houston's write-up:

Everyone knew that Denis Lebedev was one tough son of a gun and an excellent fighter. Still, I don’t think that anyone could have foreseen a two-round blowout for the Russian boxer when Lebedev met Alexander Alexeev in a cruiserweight championship eliminator in Germany on Saturday.

The meeting of southpaws looked, on paper, like being intensely competitive. Sometimes, though, one fighter lives up to expectations and the other, in boxing parlance, doesn’t show up.

Alexeev boxed like a man whose mind was somewhere else in the opening round — his trainer said afterwards it was as if the fighter was alseep. Anyone who isn’t alert at all times will pay a price against Lebedev.

I had thought when Alexeev lost to Victor Ramirez that maybe he had underestimated his opponent and perhaps wasn’t as well prepared as he might have been. He looked, though, like a shell of a fighter when he faced Lebedev. I don’t think even Lebedev could have expected to land his left hand as easily as he was able to do in the two rounds the fight lasted. Lebedev’s jab and hook were effective, too.

Alexeev did manage to get his right jab working briefly in the second round but Lebedev couldn’t miss him with the hammering left hands. When Alexeev went down, face buried in the canvas, it was a pathetic sight to behold, as were his struggles to rise and his final lurch into the ropes on legs that wouldn’t hold him up.

Sometimes a fighter can come back from a severe stoppage defeat and become somehow stronger and steelier. Other fighters never seem able to get overcome such a setback. Alexeev, alas, falls into the latter category, although his small consolation is that he lost to a fighter who is truly formidable.

 

Cool. :good

It matters little anyway, Lebedev would probably knock Godfrey out as well. Matt doesn't have the strength to keep him away and isn't quite fast enough to elude him him over the long haul through the championship rounds.

 

This video is epic.

It's Lebedev sparring with Fedor Emelianenko (mixed martial artist long rated as #1 at heavyweight...and #1 p4p by some) - in the woods! :yep

http://www.bokser.org/content/2009/07/11/093531/index.jsp