By Adrian Warren
Alex Leapai's triple heavyweight boxing world title fight against Wladimir Klitschko is close to being finalized, but his trainer and manager has scoffed at the rank outsider odds being offered on his fighter.
The Leapai camp expects to get the contract in the next day or two.
Provided the challenger's camp is happy with the terms, the fight for the WBO, WBA, IBO and IBF titles is tipped to go ahead in Germany on April 26.
The official negotiating period for the fight ended early last week, but instead of going to a purse bid, the WBO, who have installed Leapai as their No.1 challenger, granted an extension to January 22.
"We'd certainly hope to have it locked away before then, it would be nice to have it locked away before the end of the week," Leapai's manager and trainer Noel Thornberry told AAP.
While Leapai is universally considered a big underdog, Thornberry was irked by the odds for the fight offered on Tuesday by sportsbet.com.au.
They had Klitschko at $1.01 and Leapai at $13.
"I'm going to ring a couple of blokes to get on that," Thornberry said.
While Queenslander Leapai has an impressive KO record, he was rated just a $24 chance of stopping the champion and $39 of winning a decision while Klitschko was listed at $1.06 to win inside the distance and $8.10 to triumph on points.
"The bigger underdog they build us up, the better it looks for us," Thornberry said.
He pointed to the history books and the massive upset of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson by James "Buster" Douglas back in 1990 as evidence the betting institutions didn't always get it right.
"I've got a friend sitting beside me that just said they had "Buster" Douglas at 42 to 1 (to best Tyson)," Thornberry said.