Hrgovic vs Adeleye Predictions: Croatian won’t need to Filip the script to secure KO

Quality contender Filip Hrgovic looks to fend off recent British heavyweight champion David Adeleye this Saturday, August 16 at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The bout takes place on the undercard of another monster heavyweight clash, between Moses Itauma and Dillian Whyte. DAZN PPV will broadcast the event live.

Here are my Filip Hrgovic vs David Adeleye predictions ahead of this eagerly-anticipated encounter.

Filip Hrgovic vs David Adeleye Odds

Adeleye is a clear underdog, priced at 18/5. The Brit has an implied 21.7% chance of victory. Hrgovic is the comfortable favourite at 2/9 while the draw is on the market at 14/1. 

Filip Hrgovic vs David Adeleye Fight Preview

This fight is all about power. Hrgovic has wiped out 14 of his 18 victims by knockout. Adeleye has stopped 13 of his 14 beaten opponents. This has all the makings of a bombs-away affair. But the fight is a little more nuanced than that. 

Each man won on the same Queensberry card in Manchester back in April. Perceptions differed on the pair’s performances after that night at the Co-op Arena.

Hrgovic confirmed that Joe Joyce’s wisest next move would be retirement, hitting the ‘Juggernaut’ with far more punches than he should be taking at this stage in life. It was a dominant win. One that Hrgovic needed after Daniel Dubois knocked him out 10 months before.

Adeleye also secured a stoppage win, successfully defending the British heavyweight title against Jeamie ‘TKV’ Tshikeva. But the finish came in controversial circumstances. Adeleye knocked ‘TKV’ down with a brutal short left hook after the referee had called for a break during a clinch. The challenger never recovered, hitting the deck again and being stopped before the end of that sixth round.

Two wins on a big card, but two men who came out of the show dividing opinion.

Hrgovic resides in that category just below the very best, but above the lumpy melange of the rest. Dubois is the only man to beat him, but then ‘Dynamite’ went on to hold the IBF title and knock out Anthony Joshua. Hrgovic has wins over the likes of Joyce, Zhilei Zhang, Dempsey McKean and Mark De Mori. The Croat has also beaten title challenger-turned-journeymen must-haves like Kevin Johnson and Eric Molina, who appear on the record of almost every world ranked heavyweight known to man.

Hrgovic’s record lacks a big name that pops off the page. When the Croatian puncher controversially out-pointed Zhang, the Chinese fighter was a year or two away from the notoriety he got for smashing Joyce twice. Meanwhile, Hrgovic’s win over Joyce is perhaps a little underrated simply because Zhang handled him so routinely. De Mori was an easy night’s work, though it should be said that the Aussie had gone unbeaten for so long that his most recent defeat at the time was to David Haye.

If Hrgovic’s accomplishments are yet to convince the sceptics, sitting firmly in the “good-not-great” category, then Adeleye does not have a leg to stand on. The Londoner turned some heads going into his title clash with Fabio Wardley back in 2023. The first British heavyweight championship clash ever held overseas, Saudi Arabia was of course the destination. But as Wardley scored a highlight-reel stoppage in the seventh round, it felt like Adeleye would not get to fight on another of these glitzy Saudi events.

But here he is, by virtue of an impressive stoppage over Solomon Dacres and a highly questionable one against Tshikeva. The noise surrounding Adeleye hinted he would defend the British belt against either ‘TKV’ in a rematch or Clarke. Instead, Adeleye vacated his crown to take the Hrgovic fight. Clarke has been ordered to face ‘TKV’ for the opulent strap, with whispers of that all-BOXXER clash headlining the first date on promoter Ben Shalom’s BBC deal.

It is a massive show of self-confidence for Adeleye to drop the British title, and reach far above a level of competition he would perhaps have been more comfortable in for the time being. His performances against Wardley and Tshikeva did not feel like the work of a man on the cusp of fighting the division’s major names.

In Hrgovic, that is exactly what the Brit has found. The Ring have him at sixth in their heavyweight rankings. Hrgovic features in the top 10 of all the sanctioning bodies apart from the IBF, who have him at 12th. By contrast, Adeleye’s name only appears in the WBO ratings, where he occupies ninth place.

I think that, of the two British heavyweights in their 20s on this card, Adeleye has by far the toughest task. Hrgovic is arguably still in his prime, whereas Whyte has left his pomp behind. Meanwhile, Itauma looks better equipped to win the main event than Adeleye does against Hrgovic. A test might be bigger than ‘Big D’.

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Filip Hrgovic vs David Adeleye Prediction

This is certainly not an impossible assignment for Adeleye. While the former British champion is no Dubois, a shop-worn Joyce hit Hrgovic plenty in their April battle. So too did Zhang. Even in victory, Hrgovic takes a lot of punishment.

The Croatian fighter is the better boxer of the pair. Adeleye struggled to get much through against Wardley, who is never hard to find, or Tshikeva until the questionable refereeing call. We saw against Dacres what happens when Adeleye’s punches do find their target. But Hrgovic has taken plenty of big blows over the course of his career.

I like Hrgovic here and I believe the highly-ranked puncher will end the night early. Adeleye has power but I am yet to see resilience or much in the way of evasive nous. That is how you get beaten at this level. I’m tipping Hrgovic by knockout at 5/4.

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