By Ryan Songalia

When a fighter the caliber of Jeff Lacy faces someone like Epifanio Mendoza, it's usually brushed aside or overlooked as a mere formality - a "tuneup fight," if you will. Most fans and pundits are already looking past this fight to a potential Lacy clash with 2000 Olympic teammate Jermain Taylor sometime next year.

Lacy isn't.

He is expected to dispose of Mendoza with relative ease. So too were the expectations in Lacy's last two fights. But since his sole defeat in Wales two years ago, Lacy has failed to show off the pre-Joe Calzaghe form that once had him on course to becoming one of America's most celebrated champions.

This is another fight Lacy must win. And impressively.

"You have to take every fight seriously," says the former IBF super middleweight champion out of St. Petersburg, FL. "I can't take it as a tuneup fight. He comes forward and comes to fight. I'm sure he's thinking that he can win this fight.

"Right now, my focus is Mendoza. I don't want to talk about the fight with me and Jermain out of respect to Mendoza."

Now 31 years old with a record of 23-1 (17 KO), Lacy promises to go into his next fight on July 23's edition of ESPN2's Wednesday Night Fights at The Morongo Casino Resort & Spa, Cabazon, CA with a different outlook than he has in recent years.

To prepare for the first assignment of the second half of his career, Lacy has reunited with Roger Bloodworth, the man who guided him to the first 15 wins of his pro career. Lacy had been working with Dan Birmingham, who also trains Winky Wright, since his fight with Donnell Wiggins in 2003. Since April, Lacy and Bloodworth have embarked on a training campaign aimed at reintroducing Lacy to the basic fundamentals that initially brought them success.

"What we're doing right now is trying to get him back to the point where he was when he was working with me before," Bloodworth says. "When he was using his jab more, [throwing] combinations, controlling the ring and didn't worry about the knockout. He's doing really well right now. The next thing is to take it to the ring."

"There were a lot of things we trained for that I had gotten away from," admits Lacy. "It didn't take much for us to get back on the same note. Everything has been going great working with him."

Aside from rearranging corner personnel, Lacy also enlisted the services of strength and conditioning coach Tony Brady who has helped sculpt a more boxing-ready body.

Lacy realized the need for different training methods during his fight with Manfredo, when his considerable muscle mass became a severe hindrance as the rounds progressed. Outside of the early knockdown scored by Lacy, he was outhustled in punch stat numbers, winning by narrow margins.

"The thing about the Manfredo fight that I didn't expect," Lacy says, "the muscle bulk that I brought into the ring didn't have the endurance to go the whole 12 rounds. That's why I looked so flat.

"When you first start off fighting, it takes you a long time to understand how to throw certain punches. Basically, by me having 97 percent of my tendons reattached, that was my biggest problem in the Manfredo fight. Getting them to operate the way I'm used to them operating. I feel that now they're doing that."

If it isn't one thing, it's another.

In the fight before that, against Vitali Tsypko, Lacy tore his left rotator cuff in the second round and came within a punch or two of being stopped in the ninth.

From the third round on, "Left Hook" Lacy was without his signature punch.

The amount of clean punches absorbed by Lacy in that fight had many wondering if the beating taken against Calzaghe had quelled his pugilistic flame.

Lacy had surgery on the rotator cuff in December of 2006 and says that he has experienced no pain during training. He estimates its health to be at "98 percent." Having two fully functional arms has significantly improved his confidence.

"He's very focused," Bloodworth says. He wants to prove that he still has it. If he does in the ring what he does in the gym, he should be fine."

Like his pupil, Bloodworth shows a similar reverence for the Colombian slugger Mendoza, whose record stands at 28-5-1 (24 KO).

"He's tall, has a long sneaky right hand and tries to catch you around the head. His hook is pretty sneaky, too.

"I expect him to come with everything he's got because this is do or die."

To prepare for the power of Mendoza, Bloodworth brought in cruiserweight sparring partners. Bloodworth added, "It's hard to get work from fighters any smaller than that."

Mendoza has spent his career fluctuating between junior middleweight and light-heavyweight, remaining inactive since losing to then-WBC light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson in four rounds. He had stepped in on short notice to replace the injured Adrian Diaconu.

Although Mendoza's two knockout defeats represent his two steps up in competition, the Lacy camp says that if the stoppage comes, it comes. Should it not, they will not be disappointment.

"Me and Roger haven't been working on going out there and knocking people out. We've been working on the skill of boxing, getting behind my jab, using combinations. If he don't get knocked out, he's going to get really beaten up."

Says Bloodworth, "I'd love to see him control the fight with the jab and break him down methodically. He needs to shake off some rust. If Jeff can use his jab and throw combinations, it's going to be a long night for Mendoza."

Or a short one.

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