Bad Left Hook

Continuing the tradition of having heavyweight battles not on Showtime or HBO, a series of three heavyweight title fights will be airing on Epix according to an official press release on Business Wire. The fights will start with Vitali Klitschko against Dereck Chisora on February 18th for the WBC title. This fight will probably be the best of the three fights with Del Boy looking very good in his last fight against Robert Helenius. Although Chisora did pick up the loss, many observers, myself included, thought that he deserved to win the fight.

The next fight is on February 25th between Alexander Povetkin and Marco Huck for the WBA title. Huck will be making the jump to heavyweight for the first time in this fight. He was a very decent cruiserweight but we have no idea if his talent is going to translate to the heavyweight division. In terms of size, both fighters are about 6'2" and Povetkin usually weighs in around 225. I don't think that there is going to be a huge difference in size on fight night. On the other side, Povetkin continues to find opponents not named Klitschko to fight. The Russian will also be without the services of Teddy Atlas as it has been reported that the two have split up. Although it is not official, Povetkin is asking Atlas to come to Moscow to train, which is not going to happen if Atlas has Friday Night Fight duties. Essentially this bout has a metric ton of uncertainty, which could lead to an exciting matchup where each fighter is trying to prove oneself or a boring technical display.

The final fight will be the terrible matchup between Wladimir Klitschko and Jean Marc Mormeck on March 3rd for the WBO, IBF, and presumably The Ring titles. This will be a fight between the best heavyweight in the division and a guy who is not even in the top ten. Mormeck is probably best known for knocking David Haye down in their cruiserweight fight back in 2007. The big bad Ukrainian should dominate this fight and look to make it a mercifully short evening for everyone involved.

For everyone in the United States, these fights will be streaming for free through the EpixHD.com website. Also for those people in Manhattan, these fights will be aired on a jumbotron in Times Square on Broadway between 44th and 45th. I think that watching boxing in the streets of Times Square could be a very cool experience, unless its watching Klitschko-Mormeck. What are your guys thoughts on these fights and do you think Epix will become successful using this heavyweight strategy?