David Price: Is it time for him to retire?

By Boxing News - 07/19/2015 - Comments

price456By Scott Gilfoid: Last Friday night we saw former British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion David Price (19-3, 16 KOs) reduced to a pile of rubble on the canvas after being knocked cold in the 2nd round by what some boxing fans see as a mediocre heavyweight in Erkan Teper (15-0, 10 KOs) at the Ludwigsburg MHP Arena, Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemberg.

Now if this was the 32-year-old Price’s first KO loss, you might say that he should continue fighting because he’s got too much potential that he’s yet to realize. But with this now being Price’s third knockout to less than stellar competition, it leaves one with the feeling that maybe the big 6’8” guy should walk away from the game and focus on some other line of work.

When you think about Price’s future outlook against other top heavyweights in the division, it doesn’t look good at all. I see Teper as another Manuel Charr type of fighter. Yeah, he looked good against Price, but he had the perfect guy for him to look good against. I mean, I don’t think for a second that the likes of Teper can beat guys like Bryant Jennings, Carlos Takam, Chris Arreola, Kubrat Pulev or Vyachelav Glazkov. Teper just looks good against limited heavyweight in my view.

I do believe that Price could improve dramatically with a new trainer that had an understanding of what Price did wrong in his latest loss. It’s worrisome though that Price himself didn’t have the sense enough to know that he couldn’t let Teper walk him down the way he was doing in the fight. Stuff like that you don’t even need a trainer to tell you. Price should already know from his years of boxing that you can’t let a shorter fighter walk you down and get his shots off in close. Teper was nothing on the outside.

His whole game was on the inside where he blasted away at Price with clubbing shots. If I was Price’s trainer, it would have been so easily to instruct him to nullify Teper’s inside game by clinching him each time he got within punching range. But Price didn’t even know how to clinch correctly. He wasn’t holding onto Teper tightly to keep him from still being able to get his shots off. If you watch Wladimir Klitschko clinch his opponents, he grabs them so tightly that they can’t get an arm loose to throw anything. Wladimir’s trainer Emanuel Steward taught him this in the past, and he’s not forgotten. Like I said, Price didn’t even know how to clinch properly, and he wasn’t clinching when he needed to. Had he clinched the guy 24/7, Teper would have been as helpless as a baby each time he got in close to try and fire off his payload.

Price’s jab looked pitiful last Friday. It was both slow and weak. There was no snap at all with his jab. As such, Teper was able to walk right up on Price to land his shots without having to worry about getting hit with a hard jab. You would think that Price would know how to throw a jab after all this time, but clearly he doesn’t. If Price is going to continue his career, he needs to get someone like Larry Holmes to teach him the basics in how to throw a jab properly because he definitely doesn’t know how.

The holes that Price has in his game can be fixed with the right set of trainers, but I have my doubts that Price is going to get the proper trainers that he needs. As such, I see nothing changing with his game, and more disaster in the future. For that reason, I think Price needs to retire ASAP. He’s not going anywhere, and he’s just going to wind up getting knocked around by some other average heavyweights. It’s better for him to cut his losses now and move on. Who knows? Maybe he can get a gig with Sky Sports like Carl Froch. He seems to have a better gift for gab than Froch, who looked really uptight and stilted last Saturday in working the Scott Quigg vs. Kiko Martinez card.



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