Preview for Saturday’s Boxing on 7-14-12
By: Jon Campbell
On Saturday, the under card of the Heavyweight clash between David Haye and Dereck Chisora, the vacancy of the International Middleweight title will be filled when the Irish Middleweight champ Gary O’Sullivan (14-0) squares off against Matthew Hall (24-5) of Manchester. Besides the title what appears to be at stake is the movement up the ladder towards possible opportunities against higher level domestic opponents such as Andy Lee, Martin Murray and Matthew Macklin. Both of them will be hoping to capitalize upon the good promotional opportunity for their careers with a good win, which leads me to believe this may be a good bout.
Firstly, Gary O’Sullivan boasts an undefeated record and has yet to face many problems in the ring as of yet. Admittedly he has faced very little in terms of dangerous opposition and has been put on a relatively easy path by his management team during the early stage of his career. Furthermore, when faced against someone who is slightly (yet certainly) a step up, it is difficult to access his chances, as is usually the issue with rating undefeated fighters who are yet to have their weaknesses exposed. This is a chance to prove his resume is not manufactured and begin to develop desirability from the better fighters in the UK moving forward.
Matthew Hall has campaigned at Light-Middleweight for the entirety of his career and most likely will box at that class again, but on Saturday wishes to make his mark at the 160lb weight-class. Despite the fact he has lost 4 of his last 6 fights he has more experience than O’Sullivan and has both fought and beat much better opposition. His best win came in 2009 when he won the Commonwealth Light-Middleweight title against Enzo Calzaghe trained Bradley Pryce, breaking his 7-bout winning streak.
He has failed in his attempts to gain the British title and also the EBU title when he lost a 6th round TKO at the hands of top contender Lucas Konecny. He has a healthy 66% K.O rate and a style which tends not to disappoint, although he has a tendency to be dissected by reasonably skilled fighters. He will hope to win this bout in the pursuit of another minor title, possibly the British against Martin Murray. Despite the recent losses he has shown more will to fight better fighters and demonstrated class which O’Sullivan is yet to have. For example in ending the undefeated records of both Kerry Hope and Kris Carslaw.
To conclude, I may be geographically biased, but I see Matthew Hall pulling through these previous losses and taking O’Sullivan’s from him. He has stepped into the lion’s den with much better fighters before and has been willing to trade leather. He has also been in the ring and beaten the better fighters and I suspect O’Sullivan to be surprised by what Hall can cause him in terms of problems. This being said, O’Sullivan evidently has more to offer in the ring and could blow Hall away and continue his career beating fighter after fighter.
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