“Unk…..unk…. There’s no name on it!” So yelled ‘Tuco’ in the final, grave-digging scene in the classic 1966 western to beat all westerns, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.” Fight fans might have a similar problem to the uneducated bandit when it comes to reading the poster for the WBA “heavyweight championship” fight set for January 29th. Trevor Bryan will face Jonathan Guidry on Don King’s show (the headline fight, we think, to be the cruiserweight rematch between WBC boss Ilunga Makabu and challenger Thabiso Mchunu).
As the Bryan-Manuel Charr fight has collapsed yet again (google the reasons for this collapse of the fight no-one wants to see anyway if you can be bothered), Bryan, unbeaten at an impressive-looking 21-0 with 15 KO’s, will now face……. Jonathan Guidry. Who? Well, Guidry of Louisiana is a 32-year-old who has never been beaten, who has never faced a fighter of note, and who will nonetheless fight for a “world” title at the end of the month. The saddest thing is, Bryan might be a good heavyweight. But will the 32-year-old, 6’4” fighter from Albany ever get the chance to prove it?
Best known for wins over BJ Flores (a natural cruiserweight) and Bermane Stiverne, who was a faded 40-something former champ when he extended Bryan into the 11th round back in January of last year, this in Bryan’s last ring appearance, Bryan is a fighter who has called for the best. Yet so far, Bryan has never got close to getting a genuine, proper, meaningful fight. At the rate he’s going, promoted by the 90-year-old King, Bryan never will get what might be coming to him.
So what can we possibly expect from the Bryan-Guidry fight? Who on earth knows! Guidry, 17-0-2(10), and standing just 5’11”, was last in action in August, when he won a decision over Rodney Moore; with that victory somehow placing “The King” in the WBA top-15. So this title fight will go on (we assume) and the winner must then face Daniel Dubois (Charr has been removed from ‘Champion in Recess’ status).
The cruiserweight fight scheduled for the January 29 card is a good one, but will this fight actually go ahead? And to think, there was a time when Don really was the King of all things boxing.