Born in Kinshasa, Zaire in April of 1972, Lolenga Mock is arguably the toughest, grittiest “old man” in boxing today – and the super-middleweight/light-heavyweight is largely operating under the radar. Yesterday in Copenhagen, Denmark, Mock upset former interim WBA middleweight champ Dmitry Chudinov via close but unanimous ten-round decision.
With the win, Mock improved to 42-14-1(13). But the incredible thing about Mock is the fact that he has been stopped just once at pro level – this by cruiserweight David Haye, who got up from a trip to the floor to stop Mock in a wild affair back in September of 2003 (“The Haye fight was a very good fight,” Mock told this writer in a years-old interview. “But Haye was bigger than me – I wasn’t in his weight division. He has good power and I like his uppercut. He has a nice uppercut. But I had him down in the second-round and they gave him time to recover. He had about 30-seconds of time given to him after he got up from the knockdown. I was told to go to a neutral corner – ‘Get back!’ the referee told me. He had to have seen that Haye was hurt. I was then stopped without being given a chance to continue.”)
With yesterday’s win over Chudinov, Mock won for the 11th time since dropping a decision to Erik Skoglund in a European Union light-heavyweight title fight back in October of 2013. Who knows how much further Mock can go, or for how long, but he has to be credited with being one tough, proud and quite remarkable fighter. A pro since May of 1991 (!) Mock has won European titles at 168 pounds as well as an EBA strap at 175, and he clearly still wants more.
Mock has some kind of chin, he is always in top shape and he will fight anywhere: Canada, UK, Germany, Denmark, Poland, Italy and Kenya being among the places Mock has faced quality opposition. Among those top names who failed to put a dent in him are: Charles Brewer, Lucian Bute, Mario Veit, Skoglund, Patrick Mendy and now Chudinov.
Mock is a low-key kind of guy but he sure deserves to be given a ton of credit and a share of attention. It turns out David Haye stopped one tough nut all those years ago.