By Jim Dower: Having now lost his last two fights, former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Samuel Peter (30-3, 23 KOs) finds himself stuck between a rock and hard place after last night’s 10-round majority decision loss to Eddie Chambers. Peter, 28, came into the fight weighing a bit too much at 265, and the added 20 pounds of flab seemed to slow him down enough so that many of his power shots were either too slow to land or were picked off by Chambers.
Still, with Peter coming into the bout in not the best of shape, the fight was pretty well even with Chambers perhaps winning it by a round at the most. I had Chambers winning six rounds to four, and did most of his best work in the earlier part of the fight.
In the last four rounds, Peter stepped it up a level and showed his world class ability in taking three out of the last fours. Unfortunately, Peter made the mistake of coming in way too heavy and the added weight kept him from winning a fight that he ordinarily would have won. However, the loss is damaging to Peter’s career, whether close or not, because it comes directly after his dismal performance against Vitali Klitschko in October, in which Peter was jabbed silly by Vitali all night long, before Peter ultimately quit on his stool after the 8th round.
I’m not really sure how trainable Peter is as a fighter, because there is no way he should have been allowed to come in this heavy for such an important fight. I’ve been told by people that Peter sometimes sneaks food late at night, stuff that he shouldn’t be eating, and that could have been a factor in him coming in so heavy for this fight.
But, ultimately, it comes down on him and his training team. If they’re unable to get him to at least 250 for a fight, I think his career will suffer for it in the end. At 28, Peter should have been able to easily beat a fighter like Chambers, who is more of an overweight cruiserweight than a legitimate heavyweight in my eyes.
Although even if Peter was in shape, he still would have his problems landing his right hand because of the speed of Chambers. However, Peter would have had more than enough energy to put pressure on Chambers in the 2nd half of the fight to ensure that he got the win.
The most important thing that Peter needs to do is monitor what he puts in his mouth from now, making sure he doesn’t snack in between meals or late at night. If it requires that he have someone live with him to accomplish the monitoring of his eating, so be it.
It’s critical that he come into his fights at the proper weight from now on, no matter who he’s fighting, because he can’t take it for granted that he’ll simply be able to steamroll over his competition. And he certainly can’t afford another loss like the one he suffered last night against Chambers. That would be a fatal blow to his career and would probably put him far back of the pack.
For his next bout, I would put him in with someone who’s more stationary, someone he won’t have to go chasing around like he did last night against Chambers. Frankly, that was a poor choice of an opponent for him. Chambers is like a poor man’s Chris Byrd, and against these types of fighters it’s important to come in as light as possible.
Ideally, Peter’s team perhaps should have pulled him out of this fight when they saw that he was going to come in so heavy, because it was as if he was doomed for failure by coming in so high of a weight.
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