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A few weeks back, heavyweight Lennox Lewis expressed his fears for countryman David Haye. On November 7, Haye challenges WBA heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev. Lewis still sees the fight as a very tough road for Haye. He says Haye is giving up way too much to the 7'2, 320-pound giant. He almost has the fight set in his mind as a physical mismatch, with Haye only receiving an advantage in the speed department.
The opponent for WBC bantamweight champion Hozumi Hasegawa has been switched. He will now face Alvaro Perez of Nicaragua at Kobe World Memorial Hall on December 18. The original opponent was announced as former champion Eric Morel. Last week in Puerto Rico, Morel said that he received an offer but never actually agreed to the fight. Morel said he was still considering the offer.
A recent interview by Frank Curreri of www.wec.tv, gave details of the training stint that WEC star Miguel Angel Torres (135-pounds, 36-2 MMA record) had with WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto. Torres joined Cotto in his Tampa, Florida training camp for five days last week. The two fighters did not spar but they trained together, Torres used Cotto's sparring partners and received advice from Cotto's team members.
During a recent interview with Polskie Radio, Mariola Golota, wife of heavyweight Andrew Golota, told the hosts that she urged her husband to turn down the fight with Tomasz Adamek. Mariola, an attorney in Chicago, said she never wanted her husband to fight again. Golota, 41, was dominated, punished and then stopped in the fifth round of his fight with Adamek last Saturday in Lodz, Poland. The fight was billed as the biggest in the history of Polish boxing. An estimated 8.1 million television viewers watched the contest.
According to news site Sport Summary, Lanardo Tyner (21-2, 13KOs) has signed a contract to fight rising Mexican welterweight prospect Saul Alvarez (29-0, 20KO) on a December 5th card in Los Angeles, California for the NABF title. Alvarez is highly regarded and Tyner is step up in competition but he is likely too small to do any serious damage to the 19-year-old fighter.
Trainer Freddie Roach and adviser Michael Koncz do not agree on much. The two members of Team Manny Pacquiao have had an on and off feud, sometimes public, over the last couple of months. They don't even agree on their fight predictions. A week or two back, Roach made a prediction that Pacquiao stood a good chance to stop Miguel Cotto in the very first round on November 14. Pacquiao's strength and conditioning coach Alex Ariza, who recently had a physical confrontation with Koncz, agrees with Roach's prediction, stating that it's possible if Pacquiao lands the right shot.
Promoter Lou DiBella is looking to place Kermit Cintron in the biggest fight possible, at welterweight or junior middleweight. Two fights DiBella says are possible would come against WBO welterweight champion Miguel Cotto and WBA junior middleweight champion Daniel Santos. DiBella is crossing his fingers that Cotto beats Manny Pacquiao on November 14. He doesn't think Cotto-Mayweather will happen but Cotto-Cintron in New York has a good shot of coming off. Cintron returned to action last Saturday in Puerto Rico, stopping Juliano Ramos. He weighed 150-pounds, leaving the door open for a big fight at 147 or 154.
According to the Sacramento Bee, former heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev (36-6, 27KOs) will continue his bid for another title shot on December 11 when he takes a tuneup against 23-year-old Nagy Aguilera (14-2, 9 KOs) at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento. Aguilera has two defeats on his record; one by a close split decision and another by disqualification.
Heavyweight Tomasz Adamek has placed a target on the back of the Klitschko brothers, WBC champion Vitali and WBO/IBF/IBO champion Wladimir. He would like to land one of them in 2010. Last Saturday in Poland, Adamek made his heavyweight debut and demolished heavyweight veteran Andrew Golota in five rounds.
Heavyweight contender Andrew Golota, 41, knows the end of his career is now here. Saturday night in Lodz, Poland, Golota was dominated and beaten down for five rounds by fellow-Pole Tomasz Adamek, a fighter who only two years ago was competing at light heavyweight. Golota was knocked down in the first, cut and bloody by the fourth, and then dropped and stopped in the fifth. No longer the same fighter who badly beat up Riddick Bowe in 1996.