By Allan Fox: 34-year-old lightweight Michael Katsidis (31-7, 24 KOs) is tentatively scheduled to be back in the ring two months from now on September 12th against Indonesian fighter Roy Mukhlis (27-5-3, 21 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Yu Hang Gymnasium, Hangzhou, China. The fight against Mukhlis is listed by Boxrec and hasn’t yet been confirmed as of yet.
Katsidis last fought in March of this year in struggling to beat little known Rodynie Rafol (12-7-2, 5 KOs) by a 6 round unanimous decision.
Katsidis is also scheduled to fight on October 31st against an opponent still to be determined at the Rumours International, Toowoomba, Queensland.
Katsidis was stopped in the 2nd round last October by lightweight contender Tommy Coyle. Katsidis looked pretty good in the two rounds of action before getting caught with a big left hook from Coyle in the 2nd round that sent Katsidis down on the canvas. Although he did staggered to his feet to beat the count, the fight was halted due to him being too hurt to continue fighting. Before the knockout, Katsidis looked like his old self in attacking constantly and putting a massive amount of pressure on Coyle.
It would have been interesting to see how Katsidis would have done in that fight if his chin had held up. Katsidis’ attacking style is impressive to watch and hard for his opponents to deal with, but he seems to forget about his defense while coming forward, and it can lead to problems every now and then as we saw in his loss to Coyle.
“The last few years his career hasn’t gone to plan but for his deeds in boxing I believe he should go out on his terms,” said Katsidis’ former trainer Brendon Smith to thechronicle.com.au. “Now he has the chance. We’re not kidding ourselves, at 34 years of age we realize it’s probably now or never. One thing I know about Michael Katsidis – he’ll give this his best shot.”
If Katsidis can fix his defensive flaws, he might he might be able to make a decent run of it to get in position for a world title shot in the near future. But he’s going to need to pick up a lot of victories in a hurry for him to get in position for a world title shot, and of course he’s going to need to fix his leaky defense. For a 34-year-old Katsidis looks to be the same fighter he was years ago. The lightweight division has gotten better though compared to what it was when Katsidis was a top contender from 2007 to 2011.
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