By Scott Gilfoid: The once highly hyped 29-year-old British heavyweight prospect David Price (15-1, 13 KO’s) has lost a lot of his cache with boxing fans since getting massacred by the 41-year-old Tony Thompson (37-3, 25 KO’s) last February.
Rather than moving on and realizing that there are some chin issues that may keep at the domestic level, Price has foolishly decided to risk his career in facing Thompson in an immediate with everything on the line for the 6’8” Brit.
The rematch will take place this Saturday, July 6th in Price’s home city of Liverpool, UK. In other words, the loser has the hometown advantage again despite having been eradicated by Thompson.
You would think the rematch would take place in the United States because the last fight was in Liverpool as well, but money talks. The 6’5” Thompson doesn’t really care because he doesn’t see it going to the cards, so the judges will have to be spectators on Saturday night. Thompson plans on tapping Price in his glass jaw again and knocking him out once again.
Price has really taken out the stops to improve his game from the last fight. Price has trained with former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, who has worked on his conditioning and given him a lot of pointers in how to beat Thompson, such as boxing him more instead of jumping on him like Price kind of did last time.
While I have a lot of respect for what Lewis accomplished during his boxing career, I don’t think it matter what pearls of wisdom he sprinkled over the head of Price during his time training him. Lewis’s best strategy plans will likely go down the drain in this fight because Price would still have to be able to take an awful lot of hard left hooks and right hands from Thompson in order to beat him because he’s not another Wladimir Klitschko; he’s not going to be able to blast through Thompson in 6 rounds like Wladimir did last year in July. Price doesn’t have that kind of talent and never will.
If Price chooses to box Thompson, he’ll be playing into the American’s hands because Thompson’s got a reach about as long as Price, and he’ll be nailing him whether the action on the outside or not. If Price tries to box Thompson from the distance, Thompson will jab him silly because he seems to be better at extending his arms in front of him because of his flexibility.
Price can’t do that. He’s real stiff and he needs to get close to his opponents to jab them. Thompson will be nailing with right hooks and left hands, and I can see some of the hooks hitting Price on the side of the head again like last time. I don’t think Price will be able to survive getting hit on the side of the head again. I see him hitting the canvas and not being able to get back up again without staggering all over creation.
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