Denis Lebedev to defend his WBA World cruiserweight gold against Shawn Cox – Boxing News
Denis Lebedev, the current WBA World cruiserweight champion, will defend his newly acquired gold for the first ever time against surging Shawn Cox, the incumbent WBC Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) heavyweight champion, in a 12-roudn skirmish on Wednesday
April 4, 2012.
The ring for the bout will be stretched at Crocus City Hall situated in Myakinino, Russia and the event is being promoted by Hrunov Promotion’s Vladimir Hryunov. The above skirmish will headline the event whereas the bout for the vacant WBA international
super bantamweight gold between Alexander Bakhtin and Nehomar Cermeno will co-headline the pay-per-view.
Denis will enter the ring with a decent advantage over Cox. The Russian number one and world number three cruiserweight, Denis, has been in a total 24 bouts and emerged victorious in 23.
He has collected just one loss in his career against Marco Huck, an unsuccessful attempt to dethrone Huck from his WBO cruiserweight reign. The 32-year-old southpaw possesses impressive knockout ability and has brutally battered 17 opponents to collect a
knockout win.
His Wednesday night opponent, Cox, infamous as ‘The Sniper’, will enter his career’s 17th bout. The 37-year-old Cox has allowed just one pugilist to nail him, Salvatore Erittu.
The Barbados proud has collected 15 of his total 16 wins by sheer knockout and is considered as a lethal jab-thrower. Though Cox is outclassed by Denis’ experience yet he has two significant and quiet decisive advantages over the champion Lebedev.
Cox has a greater height which will help him cover more reach hence enabling him to throw powerful jabs from a safe considerable distance. In addition, his intimidating knockout ability will also help him in grasping the gold from Denis.
Since his career’s only loss, Denis is on a two-bout win streak and recently nailed James Toney via unanimous decision to engrave his name over the vacant WBA World cruiserweight gold.
Cox, on the other hand, is on a seven-bout win streak and nailed Kurt Bess to grab the WBC Caribbean Boxing Federation (CABOFE) cruiserweight title. Shawn performed his career’s startling feat by collecting a recent knockout win over former champion Wayne
Braithwaite.
Sam Layne, Cox’s proud promoter, while sharing his views about his man said, “Every red-blooded Bajan (native of the island) will be holding their breath praying that Shawn pulls it off and I really believe he can because of his dynamite power. If Cox wins,
the whole island will be waiting to give him a hero’s welcome and while he will not become as famous as Rihana, he will certainly put us on the boxing map!”
Denis needs to come up with a unique plan otherwise he might get easily pummelled by the knockout specialist. The odds are 60-70 per cent in favour of Denis but the initial rounds will define the pace that the bout will follow.
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