Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan makes it perfectly clear that he doesn’t have even the slightest amount of interest in facing fellow Brit Kell Brook at any time in the future.
Khan sees no upside in such a fight and fears that the boxing public wouldn’t care about the fight and Brook would likely pull out of the fight with an injury excuse anyway. Khan’s main interest is in getting a big fight against WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. next year.
Promoter Eddie Hearn is interested in matching his very lucky fighter WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) against former lightweight contender Gavin Rees (37-2-1, 18 KO’s) this coming September. Rees is coming off of a 5th round knockout loss to WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner last February in a fight where Rees looked terrible in before getting knocked out.
Burns got lucky last Saturday night in beating Jose Gonzalez (22-1, 17 KO’s) in a 9th round stoppage when Gonzalez quit on his stool after the 9th round. Gonzalez said after the fight he didn’t know that he had such a wide lead and that if he knew that he wouldn’t have quit.
#8 WBC Manuel Charr (23-1, 13 KO’s) has a near hopeless dream of getting a rematch against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, who made short work of Charr in stopping him in the 4th round last year in September. Charr has it in his head that all he has to do to get another nice paying bout against Vitali is for him to beat David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) next month in their fight on June 29th in the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
Charr said to Sky Sports “He’s [Vitali] never fought David Haye and Haye has called him out for three years now. Vitali said he wanted to knock him out, shut him up and all this other rubbish, but he never did anything about it. The fight has never happened. I won’t let Vitali do the same to me. I want my rematch and to get it I have to knockout David Haye on June 29th.”
Eddie Hearn has ruled out what would be a lucrative fight between his fighter IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch and 48-year-old IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins this year in September. Hearn doesn’t want Froch to be fighting guys that are slightly bigger than him like Hopkins because he sees it as putting Froch in a difficult position.
Hearn said this to Sky Sports News “It’s flattering [that Hopkins wants to fight Froch]. Hopkins understands the value of a fight with Froch, but I don’t think Carl needs a fight at a catchweight…he’d be at a big disadvantage.”
We’ve seen IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) talk about retirement if he were to lose, and now WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) is saying he’ll retire if he loses to Froch in their fight this month on May 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
I don’t know that I believe that Kessler will retire no matter how bad he looks in getting beat by Froch, but I do think it’s a smart way to market the fight. When you make the retirement threat, boxing fans seem to pick up interest in the fight thinking that it could be the last time they see a particular fighter making the threat.
Eddie Hearn, the promoter for WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns, won’t bother giving injured challenger Jose Gonzalez a chance for a rematch after he injured his left wrist and was halted in the 9th round last Saturday night.
Hearn wants to match Burns against IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez this September if he can put the fight together. That’s a big question mark because Burns and Vazquez were scheduled to fight each other not too long ago and the fight failed to come off.
It’s hard to imagine what Burns could gain from going back to this fight because it’s not as if Vazquez has a huge worldwide fan base. However, if Burns can capture another belt it might give him more respect from boxing fans.
In what appears to be WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) making a partial excuse for his poor performance last Saturday night in beating Jose Gonzalez (22-1, 17 KO’s) by a 9th round stoppage, Burns complained after the fight that he hadn’t been able to study Gonzalez going into the fight because of the lack of video out there on the 29-year-old fighter from Puerto Rico.
Gonzalez had been flying under the radar for so long in fighting less than world class opposition during his 5-year pro career that there just wasn’t much for Burns to see of him on video.
Using movement, a nice jab and some skillful roughhouse tactics, bantamweight contender Jaime McDonnell (21-2-1, 9 KO’s) defeated Julio Ceja (24-1, 22 KO) tonight by a 12 round unanimous decision to win the vacant International Boxing Federation (IBF) bantamweight ttile at the Keepmoat Stadium, in Doncaster, United Kingdom.
Former WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) has set a goal for himself in his fight against #8 WBC Manuel Charr (23-1, 13 KO’s) next month on June 29th at the Manchester Arena (formerly M.E.N Arena), Manchester, Lancashire, United Kingdom.
Haye, 32, wants to improve upon the job WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko did last September when he tore Charr’s face to ribbons in stopping him in the 4th round.