By Scott Gilfoid: 41-year-old heavyweight Tony Thompson (36-3, 24 KO’s) has worked out a deal to face unbeaten British heavyweight David Price (15-0, 13 KO’s) on February 23rd at the Echo Arena, in Liverpool, UK, according to Dan Rafael. Thompson reportedly wasn’t happy with the $40,000 that was offered to him and he felt that he deserved more than this to take on the 29-year-old Price.
The Echo arena has a seating capacity of 11,000 and if Price can sell out the arena that’s a pretty healthy gate. I don’t blame Thompson for wanting more money. He deserves a good payday for this fight if Price is a big ticket seller.
As far as the actual Price-Thompson fight goes, it’s a mismatch, which unfortunately is what we’ve been seeing with Price recently. It’s not that he’s invincible or anything like that. It’s about him being matched against old lions that in their 40s lately and not what once were. I can kind of ignore Price fighting an old guy like 40-year-old Audley Harrison, but when you follow that up with fights against 45-year-old Matt Skelton and now 41-year-old Tony Thompson, then I see a pattern here where Price is being matched against a certain type of fighter for some reason.
Now why would Price need to be matched against 40-year-olds? I know Price had problems in the amateur ranks when facing guys with power, but you can’t shield Price from guys that can punch in the heavyweight division because he’s not going to last very long unless he learns how to fight those types of guys. Putting in with 40-year-olds that fold almost immediately is worthless in my view. I think Price wasted the entire 2012 year, as well as 2011, 2010, and 2009. His competition is just god awful, and he’s not going to progress facing guys this. Price threw those last three years away with his terrible competition. He’s pretty much the same fighter now as he was back in 2008 when he turned pro. The only difference is now is that he’s almost 30 and is starting to get long in the tooth.
Thompson was a good fighter four years ago when he 37, but man he’s really deteriorated in the past four years. Take a look at how truly awful Thompson looked against Wladimir Klitschko recently, and tell me that he’s going to give Price any kind of test.
I see Price bum rushing Thompson and trying to get him out of there in the first two rounds so this can be used as a marketing tool to somehow convince boxing fans that Price is better than Wladimir.
I wish Price would start fighting some younger fighters because he’s been pooling his opponents lately from a certain age group and it’s now kind of off putting.
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