By Mark Vester
According to an interview in The Tampa Tribune, former super middleweight champion Jeff Lacy may return as early as December. Now that fights with Antonio Tarver and Allen Green have gone up in smoke, he is rededicating himself to the sport and putting full focus on his return.
"I'm hoping to maybe fight in December, but if not, I'll fight in January or February. I haven't had any time off since 2000. I need this time off and be able to come back in great shape," Lacy said.
Although there have been numerous published reports of a split with promoter Gary Shaw, Lacy denied the split to the Tribune. Lacy did make a promise of coming back better than ever. He plans to take his time with making his next career move, and is not going to rush back in the ring against a top level opponent until he feels he is 100%ready for such a fight.
"I'm not going to rush myself and set myself up for something like that [Calzaghe fight] again. I didn't see anyone blaming Gary Shaw when I lost that fight. Everyone was coming down on me … I'm going to do my own thing with Dan Birmingham, and we're going to make the right decisions. Gary does a great job promoting, but he needs to leave the boxing and training to me," Lacy said.
Trouble behind the scenes? That's the word from Lacy. He revealed that there problems behind the scenes of his mega-fight with Joe Calzaghe, but would not go into detail on what exactly happened.
"The fighter you saw against Joe Calzaghe was not me. I'm not going to make any excuses, but there were a lot of things going on before that fight most people don't know about. When I come back, things are going to be a lot different."
