David Price could face top 10 contender on September 6th in Liverpool

By Boxing News - 06/19/2014 - Comments

price5By Scott Gilfoid: Heavyweight David Price’s promoter Kalle Sauerland is interested in stepping the 6’8” Price (18-2, 15 KO’s) up a class by putting him in with a top 10 contender for his next fight on September 6th in Liverpool, UK. Sauerland’s goal is for Price to beat the top 10 contender, and then face the winner of the July 26th fight between Tyson Fury and Dereck Chisora in early 2015.

The Chisora-Fury winner will be the WBO mandatory challenger for IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitsachko, but the winner will still have to wait a while before Wladimir gets around to facing one of them.

In the meantime, Price will get a fight against Fury or Chisora. It’s a clever but dangerous move by Sauerland, because we’ve already seen Price get knocked out twice by Tony Thompson. Chisora or Fury would have a good chance of knocking Price out if that fight were to be made next year.

“September 6 in Liverpool is something we would like to do very much for Price,” Sauerland said to espn.co.uk. “It would be against someone in the top 10 in the world ratings and Pricey is already in the top 10 of the WBC rankings himself. I think it’s inevitable he will meet the winner of Fury-Chisora and it’s stadium bound for next year. Tyson fury knows he needs more experience before he fights Klitschko, and more people want to see David against either Fury or Chisora than they would David against Klitschko.”

Price isn’t ranked in the top 10 by the World Boxing Council. He’s ranked No.10 by the WBO, but that’s probably what Sauerland meant.

Price has beaten the following heavyweights since his back to back stoppage losses to Thompson: Yaroslav Zavorotnyi, Ondrej Pala and Istvan Ruzsinszky. Those are the opponents that Kalle has matched Price up with since he started promoting him this year. He’s obviously not been willing to take any chances with Price up until now, and depending on who he plans on putting him in with on September 6th, we might still see Price being matched softly.

The WBO has the following heavyweights ranked in their top 10: 1. Dereck Chisora 2. Andy Ruiz 3. Deontay Wilder 4. Tyson Fury 5. Christian Hammer 6. Kubrat Pulev 7. Mike Perez 8. Charles Martin 9. Bryant Jennings 10. David Price. There’s no way Kalle will match Price against Deontay, Ruiz, Perez and Jennings.

That leaves Charles Martin and Hammer as potential opponents for Price to fight in September. I’ve seen both of them fight and I don’t rate them as being top 15 heavyweights. I see them more as top 100 heavyweights, so it’s likely that Price will be matched up against one of these two guys – Charles Martin or Christian Hammer. Yes, technically Price will be facing a top 10 contender in September if Kalle makes the fight for him, but I think you’d have to really be stretching it to see either of them as a true top 10 contender.



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