By Per Ake Persson
Sauerland Event won the purse bids for EU heavyweight champ Francescon Pianeta´s mandatory defence against fellow-German Timo Hoffmann. However, Hoffmann withdrew from the fight shortly thereafter and now the search for a new challenger for Pianeta have begun.
It´s official: Arena Box Promotion and network Sat 1 have signed a deal and the network will televise Steffen Kretschmann vs Dennis Bahktov II to begin their collaboration.
Jr welterweightss Juho Tolppola and Emanuele De Prophetis will fight for the vacant EU title in March in Helsinki. Exact date will be announced within shortly. Tolppola was dq'd last year in an attempt to win this title against then champion Giuseppe Lauri but it was somewhat controversial and now he gets another chance.
The French Federation will beginning of February 1 implement a couple of new rules to get rid of mismatches. First of all the visiting boxer must have two wins in his last 15 and he shall have not more than three inside the distance defeats in the last ten bouts. If it helps? Well, it´s a fact that many regular losers through small gym shows (or downright fake fights) at home manage to get a few wins to build them a decent looking record while on the road it´s business as usual so this is probably not going to help.
The Russian Federation is asking the WBC to dissolve the CIS and Slovanic and the WBC Baltic Sea titles. The CIS title goes back all the way to when the USSR fell apart and featured over the years a lot of dubious matchups. The Baltic Sea title is a relatively new creation but haven´t been much active. Behind both titles were the late Edmund Lipinsky.
Arctic Pro Box in Lulea, Sweden, will stage the first show there - and the second only ever - since 1967 February 20 when local super bantamweight Karl Larsson-Jones headlines against an opponent to be announced. Lulea is way up in the north of Sweden.
Danish lightweight Kim Poulsen have parted ways with manager Henrik Risum and appears to be headed to Sauerland Event. There´s no confirmation or comment from Sauerland though. If you check out kim-poulsen.com you´ll see that someone clearly haven´t been happy about the split and hacked the page adding the recipe for "sauerkraut", a German dish.
