By Donald Geranen: WBA light heavyweight champion Danny Green (25-3, 22 KOs) n 25 (KO 22) announced his retirement from boxing, saying “I woke up at 1am Sunday morning with my stomach churning, and it was telling me to hang up my gloves, basically.” Apparently, Green, 35, had lost his interest in boxing seemingly at the time that he had found his best success. Most recently, Green defeated Stipe Drews in December to win the WBA light heavyweight championship. Although I personally had the fight ruled a draw, Green was given the decision, and was set to defend the title in April against Hugo Garay, a very winnable fight for Green. However, Green had had enough of boxing and opted to end while on top.

His career is more notable for his losses rather than his wins, in that Green never, until recently, ever able to come though in the clutch in title fights against Markus Beyer and Anthony Mundine, both of whom beat him in fiercely contested championship bouts. Aside from those fights, perhaps Green’s best win of his career came against Canadian Eric Lucas in a WBC super middleweight title eliminator in December 2003. Green, at the height of his career, stopped Lucas in the 6th round of an exciting action packed bout which saw both fighters going toe-to-toe for most of the bout. As the years past by, Green found himself losing twice to Beyer and then against Mundine.

It looked as if Green would never be able to win a title, for he was getting older and his chances were seemingly running out as younger fighters were moving up the latter. After his loss to Mundine in May 2006, Green decided to move up in weight to the light heavyweight division, where the pickings were much easier in the talent-weak division. It was here that Green found great success, beating Jason DeLisle to win the lightly regarded IBF Pan Pacific light heavyweight title in September 2006. Green followed this with impressive wins over Paul Murdoch and Otis Griffin in 2007.

This led to Green’s challenge for the WBA light heavyweight championship against Stipe Drews in December 2007. Green was out-boxed in the first half of the fight, losing every round on my card. However, he came on strong in the second half of the fight and looked to have won at least five of the rounds. The final scoring was generous for Green, and he was given an overwhelming 12-round unanimous decision by the judges.

It was a good win for Green, regardless of how the fight was scored. It was expected that Green would take on Garay, who most people felt wasn’t in the same class as Green and would figure to be an easy win for him. However, Green stepped away at the time when he was on the verge of accomplishing a lot in his career, for if he’d beaten Garay, Green had an unlimited amount of opportunities available for him in terms of unifying the title against one of the other champions in the light heavyweight division.