By Kevin Chittenden: Tony Thompson had a feeling that David Price and his management were underestimating his power going into their fight last Saturday night in Liverpool, England. Thompson felt that Price and his team saw him as an old man, and were thinking of just using him to look good in front of Price’s fans.
Thompson realized he had a good opportunity to pull a surprise on the 6’8” Price, and that’s exactly what he did by clipping him with a hard shot in the 2nd round that effectively stopped Price by knocking him down. Price got up but the fight was stopped without the action resuming.
Thompson says he didn’t care about the way his body looked for this fight because he wanted to put on extra weight so that his punches would have more power. Thompson normally weighs in the low 240s for his fights, but for this fight he weighed in at 262 lbs and looked soft around the middle. It didn’t really matter because Thompson carried the weight well, and it did appear to help his punching power as we saw with his results against Price.
Thompson said after the fight “Everyone was talking about his power, but I have 24, now 25 motherf***** who say I have power. They forget I’m 6’5” 262 pound southpaw…I wanted to give it back like he gave it to me. I’m not going to be disrespected by anybody, and I’m damn sure not going to let you run me out.”
Price hadn’t made it no secret that he wanted to knock Thompson out faster than IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko had in stopping Thompson in the 6th round last year in July. Price figured he could do the job quicker, and he looked to be trying by going after Thompson early in the 1st and 2nd rounds, landing big shots and not respecting Thompson’s own power.
Thompson just took Price’s shots for one and half rounds until he finally decided to give it back to Price. We saw Thompson land some nice shots before dropping Price with a right hand behind his ear. Perhaps Price wasn’t prepared to be hit back. He wasn’t facing any resistance at all until Thompson suddenly went after him in the 2nd round and knocked him out.
