Jeff “Left Hook” Lacy returns to action after a year injury lay off when he takes on Peter Manfredo Jr in an up coming bout. Lacy finds himself with his back agains the wall after a previous humiliating one-sided beating at the hands of Joe Calzaghe, followed by a gift decision over Vitali Tsypko last year, a bout Lacy appeared to have lost by at least a couple of rounds.
Injury or not, Lacy wasn’t impressive in the bout and could have easily have lost if he had faced a better fighter than Vitali. Manfredo has also been experienced a humbling loss to Calzaghe, having been stopped earlier. However, Manfredo is still confident that he can beat Lacy, and hasn’t let the loss to Calzaghe get to him like it did to Lacy.
Manfredo has always had low expectations, as he doesn’t have the flashy style or punch of someone like Lacy, so the loss to Calzaghe, naturally, wouldn’t likely have affected him as much as Lacy, because no one gave him any chance at beating Calzaghe. Lacy, however, was expected to beat Calzaghe, and many in the boxing world had predicted him to stop him within the distance.
At this stage of his career, if Lacy does end up losing to Manfredo, you can pretty much write him off as a serious contender from that point on. Manfredo, although a good fighter, isn’t at the top of the super middleweight contenders, as there are more than a few better fighters in the division better than him, such as Allan Green and Edison Miranda, to name just a couple. Rumors about Lacy suggest that he has lost his powerful left hook, his main weapon, as his shoulder injury was on his left side and his power hasn’t returned according to reports. If that’s the case, then Lacy is in bigger trouble than I originally thought and he’ll be soundly beaten by Manfredo.