By Mark Vester
Last February, John Duddy was on the verge of fighting WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik. He appeared on the Klitschko-Ibragimov undercard at New York's Madison Square Garden against "safe" opponent Walid Smichet. Duddy won, but during the fight he was battered and suffered cuts that forced him to withdraw from a potential June 08 clash with Pavlik.
Nearly a year later, Duddy is back in the same position, at New York's Madison Square Garden, against a "safe" opponent in Matt Vanda, and another crack at Pavlik hangs in the balance. Pavlik's promoter Bob Arum would like to put together a potential Pavlik-Duddy bout at MSG in June. He thinks the fight would sell the arena out.
The question is whether Duddy will blow his big shot for a second time. Pat Burns, Duddy's new trainer, says his fighter will be well prepared this time around and won't makes the same mistakes as last year. He promises that fans will see a new Duddy in the ring.
“I’ve been really impressed with the way John has prepared for this fight I’ve been working on a few things with him in the gym, changing a few things to make John a more rounded fighter. He’s got a great jab when he uses it. We know that John can fight, he can get up close and have a war, but I want to see him boxing more. He doesn’t have to get involved all the time," Burns told The Belfast Telgraph .
“I saw some of that in his first fight with me last summer, but I want to see even more against Vanda. He has worked his butt off in the gym. His attitude is just fantastic, he’s like an old school fighter who just gets down to business and doesn’t care who he’s fighting. I just wish I had John from the start of his career because he would have been so much further on, but he’s getting there and at light-middleweight he’s going to be some fighter. He has to get through Vanda and we’re not taking him for granted because we know that he’s one tough guy.”
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