Price not sure if he’ll face Thompson again

By Boxing News - 02/24/2013 - Comments

price5By Scott Gilfoid: David Price (15-1, 13 KO’s) is still debating right now whether he should look to avenge his 2nd round knockout loss to Tony Thompson (37-3, 25 KO’s) or just walk away and avoid a potentially dangerous confrontation. Price says he’ll be meeting with his promoter Frank Maloney next week to decide which direction they should go in.

Price said at the post-fight press conference “It’s just one of those things. It wasn’t that big of a shot. It’s where it caught me. I have to regroup. I didn’t take a sustained beating. We’re still going to become a world champion. We’re not in a bad position. I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again. It was a freak thing. Of course, when someone beats you, you want to get it right. We’ll have a chat next week to see what’s happening. We’ll decide what’s best moving forward.”

Maloney said “It was a freak accident. The shot caught him on the ear. If it had caught him on the chin then it probably wouldn’t have bothered him.”

I don’t know that I would try and explain it away as just a freak accident because fighters always get hit in the ear, and whether they get knocked out or not is largely based on their ability to take a shot. If they’ve got the punch resistance then it isn’t a big deal, but if they’ve got a chin problem then yeah they’re going to get knocked out.

I don’t think Maloney and Price are doing themselves any favors by trying to excuse his knockout loss away by saying it only happened because he was hit on the ear. Maybe Price has a glass ear. We saw Amir Khan get knocked out with a shot on the neck. A lot of fighters get hit on the neck, and very few get knocked out from it.

The right thing for Price to do is to face Thompson again and prove that it was a fluke thing. Lennox Lewis avenged his defeats, and that helped his career. If Price walks away from the Thompson fight without trying to avenge it he’s going to look bad in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, and ultimately I think it’ll bother Price.

As far as Price being able to keep this from happening again, I don’t see how he’s going to be able to do that. How do you keep from getting hit on the side of the head? It’s going to happen and the only question is whether Price will be able to take the shot.



Comments are closed.