FRES OQUENDO vs BRUCE SELDON

Two heavyweights with a fantasy of being champion meet in a 10-round off-TV bout in Chicago on Friday when locally based Fres Oquendo faces Bruce Seldon. The winner can keep dreaming, but the loser will have no place to go.

I am amazed that Seldon is still around at the age of 42. I thought we had seen the last of him when he swooned in the first round after Mike Tyson grazed his head with a punch a decade ago in Las Vegas.

Seldon was inactive for seven and a half years, flopped in comeback fights against Gerald Nobles and Tye Fields but, after another break from boxing, he decided to give the game one last whirl. He has been looking surprisingly good in his latest (and surely last) comeback, having stopped five of his last six opponents. In the fight that he lost in this sequence, Seldon was doing quite well against Kevin Johnson but got hit by a punch directly in the eye. With the eye swelling and closing, Seldon capitulated after two knockdowns in the fifth round.

A former WBA champion, Seldon is well preserved — as his handlers point out, he wasn’t taking any punches in those years when he wasn’t boxing.

When Seldon lost to Nobles and Fields he wasn’t in the best of condition, weighing 251 and 263 pounds respectively for these appearances — although he did knock Nobles down before running out of steam.

In his most recent bouts Seldon has been weighing in the mid-220s, a very good weight for him. When Seldon is in shape and motivated, he has the boxing ability and the punching power to give a good account of himself at a reasonably high level. The problem with Seldon is that he has been known to bail out when things get tough (against Tyson, he didn’t wait that long). I am not sure that Oquendo is the type who can make Seldon look for the exit, though, and the more I look at it the more I am thinking that this could be more competitive than the odds suggest.

Oquendo, 36, has good boxing ability but he tends to be cautious. In his last two big fights, against Evander Holyfield and James Toney, he did enough to lose, as they say in the game, although I had Oquendo eking out a decision in each of those contests — and many people believe that “Fast Fres” was desperately unlucky when the decision went against him in his fight with Chris Byrd.

It’s been a question of so near, yet so far, for Oquendo. He was very much in the fight with John Ruiz when he got stopped in the 11th round, while he was winning almost every round against David Tua until his concentration wavered and he got caught by a left hook in the ninth round.

Oquendo is young enough — and has a big enough name — to get another chance at the top level, but of course he must win on Friday.

I don’t make this an easy fight for Oquendo. The fact that Seldon has lost so much weight shows that he has worked hard in the gym and is taking his boxing seriously. If Oquendo is underestimating Seldon, there could be a problem. Oquendo surely knows, though, that a defeat against Seldon would be a disaster to his career and I am sure he will be well prepared.

Seldon has the capacity to be dangerous, but Oquendo should be smart enough to score points and keep himself safe — either by moving around the ring or by falling into clinches after getting his punches off.

While Oquendo can’t seem to win the big fights — and in fairness, luck hasn’t always been with him — he has always come through against the lower-tier types. I expect him to come through on Friday, too. I think he can win most of the rounds, using the punch-and-move, hit-and-hold style that usually works well for him, and while Oquendo usually isn’t a big hitter I believe that his right hands can get some respect from Seldon.

I am not sure about Seldon’s mental strength. Physically, he looks the part, but if things start going wrong for Seldon, or if something untoward happens, it is quite possible that he could begin to fall apart psychologically — after all, it has happened before. The oddsmakers have the “under” favoured in the over/under proposition, and in view of Seldon’s history this makes sense.

If Seldon can hold himself together, though — and I see no reason why he should be intimidated by Oquendo — he might be able to put up a good fight. I do expect Oquendo to win, but I will not be shocked if the fight goes the distance,