John Murray vs Andrei Kudriavtsev Preview
Manchester action man John Murray returns to battle on Saturday evening looking to take care of one last spot of business on the European circuit before taking aim at the world’s best lightweights. The opponent, veteran Andrei Kudriavtsev, is a well schooled technician from the former Eastern Bloc, a two time national champion and a home bird by nature.
After inauspicious beginnings which returned five defeats from his initial nine outings as a novice, Kudriavtsev went unbeaten through five years and twenty contests, a run which carried him to a showdown against the unbeaten Paulus Moses. Despite an admirable showing, Moses (who would later grab an alphabet belt) proved a bridge too far and halted Kudriavtsev in nine, yet it took an extremely determined shift from the Namibian to derail the man from the Kerch Peninsula.
Here, Kudriavtsev makes only his third business trip outside of Eastern Europe after splitting a pair of distance fights with Frenchman Anthony Mezaache on previous road trips. Although a competent craftsman, Kudriavtsev falls into the solid if unspectacular category of fighter, which you imagine won’t quite be enough to see him home against the improving Murray.
The threshing machine from Levenshulme, now in his prime, will understand that an impressive performance is paramount here if he is to have any hope of landing a marquee date with either lightweight boss Juan Manuel Marquez or his impending challenger Michael Katsidis. In order to secure more realistic opposition, such as Mexican alphabet titlists Humberto Soto and Miguel Vazquez or perhaps the Venezuelan Miguel Acosta, Murray needs to project himself as an attraction.
Kudriavtsev likes to hold centre ring and move side to side from behind a high and tight guard before looking to apply steady pressure upon his opponent. Murray can find success with his patented body attack and especially with his high quality uppercutting, the very weapon which precipitated the tumbling of Kudriavtsev’s dominoes against Moses.
The pair will more than likely meet each other in mid ring where Kudriavtsev’s strategy of blocking before counter punching will soon begin to lose fizz as he finds his defences whittled away by the sheer volume of leather thrown in his direction. Murray is a relentless foe who wears opponents down with his constant and debilitating attacking as evidenced in his last outing where he halted the courageous Welshman Gary Buckland in the eleventh round of a frenetic fight.
Kudriavtsev, 34-7 (15) isn’t given a chance by oddsmakers with only the nature of his demise offering punters any hope of a return. I’d imagine there’ll be a lot of money laid on the British and European champion Murray 29-0 (17) to finish the job in the second half of the contest, however, he could be made to settle for a unanimous decision victory by a game opponent who’ll come to fight without ever threatening to win.
Sky Sports televise the Matchroom show live from Wigan’s Robin Park Arena.
Here are a few meanderings from over the last week:
- There’s nothing like kicking a man while he’s down. The BBB of C waded into the Ricky Hatton debacle this week and revoked the boxing licence from Manchester’s prodigal son (despite Hatton publicly explaining that he was done as a prizefighter). Hatton’s former promoter and current business rival Frank Warren requested that they take it one step further and withdraw his promoter’s licence also. Classy.
- The Shane Mosley vs Sergio Mora fight must have been pretty awful for boxing scribes to produce that many cartwheels over Victor “Baby Oscar” Ortiz and Saul “The Mexican Wayne Rooney” Alvarez beating up on the ghosts of Vivian Harris and Carlos Baldomir.
- After managing to catch snippets of last week’s Magnificent Seven card from Birmingham I’m feeling a bit better about the fact that I didn’t stump up the extra pay-per-view levy demanded. James DeGale snatched a lot of headlines and showed some nice moves against Carl Dilks despite the pitty-pat quality to his punching. I’m not sure what surprised me more, though, firstly the fact that the bout was stopped after DeGale threw a flurry of punches which caught Dilks’ gloves or secondly, the fact Dilks didn’t protest when the bout was called off. Odd.
- Words fail me with regards to referee Erkki Meronen’s handling of the Alexander Frenkel vs Enzo Maccarinelli bout. That doesn’t include curse words.
- I thoroughly enjoyed the latest round of banter between DeGale and arch rival George Groves with contracts being flung hither and thither and chest beating abound. As of today Groves overpowers DeGale. The longer they leave it, the harder the task becomes for the Hammersmith man as “Chunky” is improving dramatically with each fight.
- I really miss Felix Trinidad, just had to put that out there.
- Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see Frank Warren set Nathan Cleverly on a veteran like Glen Johnson whilst keeping one eye on divisional big dog Jean Pascal after the Welshman did away with the number six ranked light heavyweight in the world? Instead, look for Cleverly to be aimed towards a WBO title fight against a man who ranks below him. A procession of “world title” defences in Cardiff which mean very little in the grand scheme of things will undoubtedly follow.
Photo credit: Chris Bevan
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