by Mark Lovell: Current IBO Cruiserweight championship holder Danny Green, 37, is pondering retirement after he underwent emergency surgery in early January. Green, who holds a profesional record of 37(27)-3-0, has reportedly had difficulty returning to full fitness after a large abscess was removed from his abdomen.
”The doctors have left it up to me. They’ve advised me to just see how I feel and really the ball’s in my court.
”I’m not going to make any stupid decisions. If I can go on I’d like to, if I can’t, well then I’m a realist. I realize that it wouldn’t be easy to just walk away from it but I’ll have to do what my body’s telling me to do.
If Green’s career would end now, he will do so largely without the „legacy“ which seems so prized by boxers in this day and age. Like Anthony Mundine, who handed Green his second defeat at Super Middleweight, Green has fought a very large proportion of his fights domestically with only four of his thirty-four fights overseas (a spot on the Tszyu-Tackie undercard in Las Vegas; winning the Interim WBC Super Middleweight Title in Montreal against Eric Lucas; losing the WBC belt proper against Markus Beyer in Zwickau, Germany and his capturing of the vacant IBO Cruiserweight belt). This would not be a problem to Americans or Germans but fighting almost exclusively in Australia has traditionally been the sign of a protected fighter.
Green won the vacant cruiserweight title in a fight with Julio Cesar Dominguez in Mississipi. Dominguez sported an unimpressive 20-4-1 record, and was even more of a domestic fighter than Green: twenty three of his twenty five fights were held in his domestic Argentina and were against compatriots – his two international forays against undefeated fighters were losses.
Green’s next three defences were unsurprisingly held in Australia and were unarguably complete travesties. The significantly faded 40yo Roy Jones Jr was knocked down in the first round – a result which created a large amount of crowing in the Australian media and accusations of glove tampering from the Jones camp. This was followed by a bout between 22-6 Manny Siaca, who five months previously had fought at middleweight – a match that ended in a third round KO.
Finally, in a fight that will go down in infamy (in Australia at least), Green supposedly „rose to the bait“ and fought fellow Australian Paul Briggs. Briggs’ last bout was over three years ago and there were worrying signs at the weigh-in when he presented himself 3 kilos above the agreed amount. Come fight night, Briggs collapsed in a heap after 29 seconds from an innocuous Green jab. The fight was investigated and later cleared, but Green was tainted by agreeing to fight a man who was so outmatched in a fight surrounded by the stink of betting scandal and alleged mental illness.
Briggs’ next fight was hardfought with a reputable opponent in BJ Flores, again in Australia, but it seemed Green still had a way to go to establish himself as a man serious about being the best of the best. If he was to avoid a reputation like the one of his countryman Anthony Mundine – who talked big about fighting the best but had an affinity to importing unimpressive South Americans to Sydney to box and eventually became unstuck against an unheralded local fighter who won his chance in a „Contender“ reality-show – Green would have had to pack his swag and head to Europe to fight the likes of undefeated Marco Huck or the huge-hitting Russians Lebedev and Frenkel. Retirement after surgery would mean we never will know whether he could of conquered the world, although reports a match-up was being planned between New Zealand former heavyweight (and Tua victim) Shane Cameron would suggest not. It would be an unhappy, un-fulfilling end to another fighter who possibly could have achieved boxing greatness but decided to forgo the chance to stay home.
Interview sourced from AAP