By Jake Donovan
Looks can be deceiving.
At first glance, undefeated Cuban prospect Odlanier Solis looks like a guy who needs to train harder and campaign at cruiserweight. His looping right hand looks more like a slap than a money punch. He's hardly intimidating to your average heavyweight. There's no way he'll measure up to his Cuban predecessor Felix Savon.
That's what they were saying prior to the 1999 Cuban Championships – before Solis beat the mighty Savon for the first of six straight national titles. It was also the first of two wins for Solis out of three fights against the legendary amateur.
Those two wins were among an astonishing 227 that Solis compiled, against just 14 losses, in his own brilliant amateur career. Among his achievements, multiple championships in national, Pan Am, and world tournaments, with wins over David Haye, Sultan Ibragimov and Wilmer Vazquez among literally hundreds of other notable amateurs.
In the grand tradition of Cuban Olympic dominance, Solis cruised to Olympic Gold in the 2004 games. It can be argued that Solis would've medaled four years earlier, as he never lost a tournament at the world level. Only, he opted to not participate in the 2000 Olympics. Instead, Savon was given the opportunity to – and succeeded in – capturing his third straight Gold medal in the heavyweight division before retiring from the sport.
It would be the last for Savon, who retired soon thereafter.
Solis was next in line, but he wouldn't rack up the Olympic hat trick managed by both Savon and Teofilio Stevenson before him. Had he made a career of the amateurs… who knows? But Solis wasn't interested in finding out. He stayed in the non-pay ranks for two more years, long enough to give the super heavyweight division a test drive before defecting from the Cuban Amateur Team in late 2006 along with teammates Yuriorkis Gamboa and Yan Barthelemy.
The trio signed with German-based promotional outfit Arena Box, but the plan was to make their pro debut in Miami before traveling abroad. Homeland security issues KO'd those plans, delaying the group's debut by nearly three months.
Solis officially turned pro in Germany last April, against Andreas Sidon, an 8-year veteran of 39 fights. Experience was hardly a factor, as Solis decked Sidon with a looping right hand – the punch that feels a lot worse than it looks - just seconds into the bout. About a half-minute later, Sidon would once again find himself on the canvas. It was another overhand right, this time set up by a Solis body shot that froze his man before landing his money shot. Boom. Fight over, less than a minute in.
Not a bad start to a career, one would think. Only Solis had other problems, like trying to escape from the shadows of stable mate Gamboa, who has since emerged as the sport's brightest prospect. Like Solis, Gamboa was asked to jump in with both feet, with the early stages of his career being spent against season veterans.
A new hook was needed for Solis to stand out on his own merits. The opportunity would come one fight later, also in Germany, in fact playing host to the Cuban's first six pro fights. Two-time Olympian Alex Mazikin was brought with intentions of providing a much stiffer test than was the case with 45-year old Sidon. Instead, the fight was a carbon copy of Solis' debut – an overhand right ending the night early, with Mazinkin down and unable to continue after a mere 43 seconds of one-way action.
Back-to-back instant knockouts should be enough to impress even the most hardened critic. Guess again; skeptics instead took note in his four-round waltz with Aldo Colliander three weeks later, insisting his 20 extra pounds of flesh would ultimately be his undoing.
There's a hint of truth to that; there's no question Solis sacrificed a portion of the speed he boasted when tearing through the amateur ranks, even when he moved up to super heavyweight. If he were to wear the weight as a pro, he'd have to reveal a method to his madness, rather than just come across as a fat guy not terribly interested in training.
The solution: advance his already accelerated level of opposition (for a prospect anyway) to align it with ranked contenders and former world champions. The result: Solis still dominating competition, but also giving a better look at what his style is all about. Patient, stalking, a committed body attack, and always finding a way to set up his oh-so effective overhand right.
Marcus McGee, Jeremy Bates and Julius Long were all journeymen familiar to American audiences. Of the three, McGee was the most capable of finding his way around a ring, nearly perfecting the art of doing just enough to last the distance and avoid the suspension list. Not so against Solis, who outboxed him in the first round and pummeled him in the second before forcing a stoppage.
Fans holding out hope for faded former top heavyweights Evander Holyfield and Andrew Golota pointed to their respective knockouts of Jeremy Bates as proof each still had a little bit of fight left in them. Six days after the air came out of Holyfield's tires against Sultan Ibragimov, Solis further exposed the shell game, lighting up Bates with right hands and uppercuts, the latter producing a first round knockdown and eventual referee intervention early in the second.
Not even the sight of his own blood would slow down Solis against 7'1" Julius Long. A cut developed around the right eye of Solis midway through the opening round, but would instead serve as motivation, as Solis pitched a shutout in perhaps his most impressive, if not complete, performance to date.
He has a chance to improve on that mark. With the recent news of Arena-Box granting Gary Shaw Productions the stateside rights to their trio of transplanted Cubans, Solis can look forward to a May 17 date in the US, on an undercard in which the more celebrated Gamboa will make his HBO debut.
But before he worries about once again getting lost in his teammate's shadow, Solis has the stage to himself this Friday, when he faces battle-tested Cisse Salif this Friday in Germany. It will be his first appearance of 2008 in Deutschland, having scored a 3rd round knockout in Italy just two weeks ago. Salif is best known for his close-but-no-cigar split decision loss against David Tua. Much like the aforementioned Marcus McGee, Salif is no world-beater but knows his way around a ring, suffering just one knockout loss in 33 fights, which came early in his pro career, now going on ten years.
Chances are, Salif will look back at everyone he's fought in his career, then glance at Solis' soft frame and decide, "I've fought better." It's been the mindset of each of Solis' seven preceding opponents, with all seven learning the hard way the same lesson.
One day it will sink in, before and not after the fact, that despite the lack of definition and years in service, Odlanier Solis is one to watch in a heavyweight division desperately in need of present and future talent.
Until they get it, Solis will simply continue to lead by example that you don't have to look the part in order to play the role.
Jake Donovan is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Tennessee Boxing Advisory Board. Comments/questions can be submitted to JakeNDaBox@gmail.com.
