Tony Thompson obliterates Price

By Boxing News - 07/06/2013 - Comments

price78By Scott Gilfoid: 41-year-old American heavyweight Tony Thompson (38-3, 26 KO’s) survived a 2nd round knockdown to come back and stop British heavyweight David Price (15-2, 13 KO’s) in the 5th round on Saturday night at the Echo Arena, Liverpool, Merseyside, United Kingdom. Price was stopped on his feet in the 5th while taking terrible punishment in the corner.

The referee did the right thing in stopping the fight because Price was totally exhausted and hurt from the 4th round on.

Price dropped Thompson in the 2nd round with a hard right hand while in close. The shot hurt Thompson pretty badly because he was down on his back with his head resting against the ropes for several moments before he finally started to get up. A lot of referees would have stopped the fight right then and there if they saw a guy knocked down like that, but this referee gave Thompson the opportunity to get back up to his feet. Luckily for Thompson, the knockdown occurred late in the round and that made it easier for him to survive.

Early in the 3rd round, Price nailed Thompson with a big shot that sent him flying to the ropes where he hung there briefly. The referee probably should have ruled that a knockdown, but he blew the call. The ropes prevented Thompson from being knocked down, so it should have been a knockdown. Price then unloaded everything on Thompson trying to get him out instead of being patient. Price landed a lot of good shots, but he was losing a lot of his power because he was fading.

In the 4th round, Thompson took command of the fight in the second half of the round and had Price slightly staggering in the final moments of the round. Thompson an awful of head shots in that round. They weren’t necessarily big head shots but the cumulative effect had Price looking dazed when the round ended.

Price had nothing left at all in the 5th round. Thompson teed off on Price with short punches to the head; backing him up to the ropes where he unloaded a storm of punches that caused Price to learn forward at one point. Thompson kept throwing punches and nailed Price in the back of the head with a hard right hand. The referee then stepped in and gave Price a standing eight count. After he finished the count the referee decided that Price was too hurt to continue. Price was bleeding from one of his eyes and he looked totally exhausted, as he leaned his head all the way back and then leaned forward to catch his breath.

Price fought an incredibly stupid fight by choosing to slug with Thompson and fight at a fast pace instead of using the preplanned game plan to box Thompson on the outside. It looked like Price got caught up with the training comments made by his assistant trainer Lennox Lewis for this camp, as Lewis wanted Price to come out and show his mean side and take Thompson’s head off. That kind of an aggressive fighting style is what caused Price to get stopped last time he fought Thompson, so it’s unclear why Lewis didn’t understand that it wouldn’t be a good idea to fight like that again.



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