By John F. McKenna (McJack): 42 year old Cedric Boswell (35-1, 26 KO’s) is looking forward to the opportunity to bring a heavyweight title belt back to America when he takes on World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight champion Alexander Povetkin (22-0, 15 KO’s) on Saturday night in at the Hartwall Arena in Helinski, Finland.

Boswell has won 14 fights in a row since suffering his only loss against James McCline in 2003. After the loss to McCline, Boswell took a two and a half year hiatus from boxing.

The noteworthy opponents in those 14 victories were the highly touted 27-0 Roman Greenburg in 2008 and more recently 45 year old Oliver McCall in March. McCall won the WBC title when he defeated Lennox Lewis in 1994. He defended the title against Larry Holmes, before losing it to Frank Bruno the following year.

Boswell was quoted in the Associated Press saying:

“The American dream will soundly defeat the Russian pretender.”

Povetkin won the “regular” WBA heavyweight title when he defeated Rusian Chagaev in August. The “regular” WBA title was declared vacant after Vladimir Klitschko was elevated to super WBA champion after his victory over David Haye in July.
“The Boz” as Boswell is known to his fans is a former sparring partner of Povetkin.

Povetkin is trained by American Teddy Atlas. Atlas started looking for fighters from Eastern Europe to train when it became increasing difficult for him to find fighters from America who wanted to pay the price to become champion. Povetkin pulled out of a proposed fight with Vladimir Klitschko in 2010 because Atlas deemed him as not being ready for a fight with Klitschko. More recently Povetkin has expressed a desire to fight Vladimir.

Povetkin, the 2004 Olympic gold medalist at Athens refuses to engage in trash talk and instead says that he will do his talking inside the squared circle. He is the busier of the two and is technically efficient in the ring although he is not known as a big puncher.

The Boswell – Povetkin fight is part of a doubleheader billed as “The Night of the Heavyweights”. In the other half of the doubleheader Finland’s Robert Hellenius (16-0, 11 KO’s) will take on Dereck Chisora (15-1, 9 KO’s) for the vacant European heavyweight title. Because of Hellenius’s popularity the 12,000 seat Hartwall Arena is expected to be filled to capacity.