Krasniqi vs Saleta on Klitschko-Donald
Undercard in Dortmund
24.06 - Dortmund – It’s 40 years ago since Dortmund
held a European heavyweight championship with German
participation. On 24 February 1962 Welshman Dick Richardson
defended his EBU title successfully against German
challenger Karl Mildenberger by knockout in round
1.
Like Richardson all those years back it’s Luan Krasniqi’s
intention as well to make a successful and impressive
defense of his European belt. The 31-year-old Hamburg
based fighter who captured the vacant title in January
against his German countryman Rene Monse will face
Poland’s Przemyslaw Saleta the first time he steps
into the ring as champion.
“I haven’t studied Saleta on video so far. I know
he’s solid and capable. But he’s also a solvable task
for me”, the confident 1996 Olympic bronze medal winner
said. “Dortmund will be like any other fight. It makes
no difference that it’s my first title defense. But
I’m very happy that I’m going to defend my belt on
this event because first it seemed that it wasn’t
possible.”
Challenger Przemyslaw Saleta is a professional boxer
since 1991 and the current champ of Poland. The 6-foot-4
½ giant from Warsaw is 41-3 with 21 knockouts.
One of his losses came in his only previous attempt
to become European champion, a fight against then
title holder Zeljko Mavrovic from Croatia.
Coach Michael Timm is very positive about the shape
of his charge who resumed training 3 weeks ago. “Luan
is a real professional. There are few boxers who train
so hard and work toward their aims so consequently.
He will be in top shape on fight night. And he will
step into the ring with a much different attitude
than when he won the title six months ago in Magdeburg.”
The intelligent and eloquent European champion who
admires Max Schmeling as his idol and has been living
in London as sparring partner of Lennox Lewis for
three years will be the second main event in Dortmund.
In another heavyweight title fight Dr. Vitali Klitschko
will take on American Larry Donald for the WBA international
championship.
Peter Hanraths, managing director of Universum Box-Promotion,
is convinced that the main events will be highly attractive.
“Except from Wladimir Klitschko we will present the
best heavyweights of Europe. It was our intention
to bring up world class fighters for our first common
boxing event with our new television partner ZDF.
And we managed to do it.”
The main events will be broadcasted live in Germany
on ZDF at 23:00 after the SPORTstudio show.
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