By Scott Gilfoid: American Tony Thompson has a really tough task on his hands in facing the unbeaten heavyweight David Price on February 23rd at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. This is a fight where the aging 41-year-old Thompson is going to be over-matched in a big way against the taller, younger 6’8”, 29-year-old Price. It’s not that Price is really young, because he’s getting up there in age at 29, but he’s still considerably younger than the soon to be 42-year-old Thompson.

The mismatch and power between them are pretty dramatic to say the least. Price’s promoter Frank Maloney has picked a weak puncher in Thompson, who is still technically a top contender, in order to pick up a scalp with a name. This is a non-threatening fight for Price. He’s not going to have to worry about getting blasted out early like he was the last time he fought a puncher five years ago against Italy’s Roberto Cammarelle in the 2008 Olympics.

It’s hard to imagine that Price hasn’t faced a puncher in 5 years because how do you avoid punchers for five consecutive years unless you’re being carefully matched to exclude those types of fighters.

Thompson is in pretty shape for this fight in terms of his chances. My advice, and he can accept it or ignore it as he likes, is for him to go wild on Price in the 1st round and look to unload everything but the kitchen sink to try and get him out of there before someone else gets to him. If Thompson can throw some mean leather on Price in the opening rounds it’s possible he could slap him to the canvas.

Price’s chin is questionable, so Thompson is going to have to rear back and throw with all the power he’s got in his body to try and knock him out. If I’m Thompson’s coach, I’m telling him to jump on Price and flurry on him like Lennox Lewis did in his win over Andrew Golota many years ago.

The reason why Thompson needs to do this is because the longer this fight goes the more likely Price will connect with something big and knock him out. I don’t think Thompson is going to be able to take more than two or three rounds of punishment before he gets stopped in this fight anyway, so he’s going to have to try and go all out to stop Price in the 1st round before Price has gotten a chance to unload his own shots.