By Scott Gilfoid: It’s been a year since Australian Michael Katsidis (28-4, 23 KO’s) blew out Brit Kevin Mitchell (32-1, 24 KO’s) in a third round TKO in May 2010. In that fight, Katsidis turned up the heat on Mitchell suddenly in the 3rd round, and had Mitchell turning his back and cowering to signal surrender.

Indeed, it was a sad moment for Mitchell. Now a year later, Katsidis could be on the verge of fighting Mitchell again. He’s been in contact with Mitchell’s promoter Frank Warren about a Mitchell rematch and has let Warren know his conditions for the fight. Katsidis has no problems going back to England to fight Mitchell, because he liked the noisy atmosphere surrounding their fight last year.

Katsidis thrived on the energy from the fans and used it for motivation to destroy Mitchell. Since that defeat, Mitchell took off a god awful amount of time from the ring until coming back to defeat a slow local fighter John Murray by an 8th round TKO last July. Technically, Murray was ranked in the top five by the WBC in the lightweight division at the time of the fight, but Murray had never faced a world class fighter because and really had no business being ranked anywhere inside the top 20.

This is why the sanctioning bodies need to be replaced by something better that actually knows how to gauge the talent of the contenders, because Murray was just one of many examples of fighters being ranked high without the talent or the experience to deserve that ranking. Now fresh off his win over Murray, Mitchell wants to try and avenge the loss to Katsidis. I think it’s a mistake.

Beating a slow as molasses fellow British fighter like Murray is one thing but beating a fast, powerful world class fighter like Katsidis is quite another. Mitchell will get blown out if they fight again, because Katsidis will catch up to him and lay him out with a left hook or a straight right hand. Katsidis has improved since the Mitchell blowout and is looking really good right now. I think Mitchell doesn’t need another knockout loss. He needs to stick with domestic fodder and try and make a go of it at his own level instead of taking on Katsidis again and getting knocked out once more.