(Photo Wende) By Scott Gilfoid: Former British/Commonwealth heavyweight champion David Price (17-2, 15 KO’s) shockingly had to climb up off the deck in the 1st round to come back and halt Euro level heavyweight Ondrej Pala (33-5, 23 KO’s) on Saturday night at the Blue Water Dokken, Esbjerg, Denmark. The tall 6’8″ Price was bowled over by a thudding left hook to the side of the head.
Price got back to his feet but he didn’t look steady on his feet. It was only due to Pala not having the talent to take him out that the 30-year-old Price.
After a so-so looking 2nd round in which Price still didn’t look good, he came on strong in the 2nd and landed a couple of nice right hands to send Pala down on the canvas. After the second knockdown, referee Freddy Rafn halted the fight at 0:33 of the round.
The win for the soon to be 31-year-old Price leaves a lot of unanswered questions about whether he has the talent to cut it at the higher level. I mean, if Price is nosediving from getting hit by the likes of Pala, what’s going to happen when he steps it up a couple levels against talents like Deontay Wilder and Chris Arreola? Those guys can really punch, and once they get an opponent hurt the way Price was in the 1st round, they finish them off straight away.
As for Price’s performance against Pala, I wasn’t impressed at all. It was more of a backwards step for him than a forward one, because he showed the same fragile chin that he’s shown in his losses to Tony Thompson. Additionally, Price still doesn’t seem capable of staying on the outside to use his long reach the way he should be doing. If you look at guys like Deontay and Wladimir Klitschko, they’re both able to stand on the outside and jab their opponents without getting hit. But with Price, he he constantly walked forward into medium range before throwing his punches tonight against Pala.
What that meant was that Price was never out of range of Pala’s punches at any time. I’m not sure what the problem is for Price, as I think it might have something to do with his lack of flexibility because he should be able to throw jabs from the outside to use his long reach instead of getting a couple feet away from his opponents before throwing his jabs. It looks incredibly strange the way Price does that, and it made it awfully easy for Pala to nail him tonight.
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Former middleweight title challenger Andy Lee (32-2-2, 22 KO’s) had to struggle to defeat journeyman Frank Haroche Horta (34-13-5, 13 KO’s) by an 8 round majority decision. The final judges’ scores were 77-76, 76-76, and 77-76. I personally had the fight scored as a draw at 76-76. The southpaw Lee was getting nailed constantly by Horta, and the fight was a highly competitive one due to Lee’s lack of defense to the power shots from Horta. This should have been a mismatch for Lee, but it turned out to be another disappointing performance from him.
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