By Rick Reeno

A few days ago, WBO junior middleweight champion Sergei Dzinziruk appeared on the internet and issued a challenge to the newly crowned interim-champion Paul Williams. Early tonight, an irate George Peterson, manager and trainer of Williams, contacted BoxingScene.com to voice his displeasure over Dzinziruk turning down a fight with Williams.

According to Peterson, promoter Dan Goossen and advisor Al Haymon were working on a potential meeting between Williams and Dzinziruk in the United States. Peterson says that Dzinziruk and Universum [Sergei's promoter] wanted no part of the fight.

"This guy goes on the internet and calls for a fight with Paul Williams. He said 'I want Paul Williams, I'll fight Paul Williams anywhere.' I get a call from Dan [Goossen] and he told me that Sergei Dzinziruk turned the fight down. He doesn't want to fight Paul Williams. When I heard Sergei wanted to fight Paul, I started licking my chops. Dan and Al [Haymon] were working to get us that fight, and he turned the fight down," Peterson said.

Dan Goossen was unavailable for comment, but one of my contacts in Germany advised me that Dzinziruk is asking for an outrageous sum of money to fight in America. Given the state of the American economy and looming budget cuts that are going to make HBO and Showtime more selective on how they spend their money, it's outrageous for any fighter with absolutely no "name value" in the United States to make unrealistic monetary demands to fight in the country. The news is not surprising when considering that Universum recently turned down an offer of 2.5 million Euro [over $3 million USD] to match middleweight Felix Sturm in a unification bout with Arthur Abraham.