Weigh-In: Peter 265, Chambers 223 – News

By Boxing News - 03/26/2009 - Comments

peter46234By Eric Thomas: Former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Samuel Peter (30-2, 23 KOs) weighed in at a career high of 265 for his weigh-win with heavyweight contender Eddie Chambers (33-1, 18 KOs) for their 12-round bout on Friday night at the Nokia Theater, in Los Angeles, California. Chambers, 26, came in at a smallish 223 in comparison, though he didn’t exactly look slender either.

The fight will be sown on ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” which will give both fighters a lot of visibility because it won’t be shown on one of the premium cable channels like HBO or Showtime. In this economy, it’s like gold to have a fight as competitive as this one in a non PPV bout.

Peter, 28, lost his WBC heavyweight title in a 9th round stoppage to Ukrainian Vitali Klitschko on October 11th, 2008, a fight in which Peter was dominated from the 1st round until the 8th and never was able to get un-tracked against the big 6’8″ Klitschko.

Fighting passively the whole time, Peter went out with a whimper by quitting on his stool after the 8th round ended. It was easily the worst performance of Peter’s career, and what made it so much worse was his lack of effort in the fight.

Peter’s high weight of 265 for the Chambers bout is a worrisome issue, because Peter is at his best around 243. Coming in at such a high weight against a crafty fighter like Eddie Chambers, who specializes in using his fast hand speed, quick foot movement and his ability to get out of the way of punches, appears to be a looming problem for Peter.

In the weigh-in today, Peter looked soft, flabby and at least 30 pounds overweight. My best guess for why Peter chose to come in so heavy is perhaps he feels that he’ll be able to use the extra size to overpower the smaller Chambers.

However, if that were the case, he was more than big enough between 245-256 to get the job done against a weak puncher like Chambers. What he needed to do if he were thinking smart would be to come down in weight to at least the mid 240s to 250, and focus on his speed and power to get the job done. After all, Chambers isn’t the easiest fighter to hit and he is almost impossible to knockout.

Chambers has beaten good B level fighters like Dominick Guinn, Calvin Brock and Rafael Butler in his nine-year boxing career. However, he ran into a former 2004 Olympic Gold medalist Alexander Povetkin in January 2008, losing by a 12-round unanimous decision.

Though the scores were verily close, the fight really wasn’t after the 4th round, as Povetkin wore Chambers down and dominated the last eight rounds of the fight. Before that, Chambers had done remarkably well in the first four rounds, swelling up both of Povetkin’s eyes with speedy punches. However, Chambers faded, looked tired and sluggish during the rest of the way.

If Peter is able to duplicate the fast pace that Povetkin set, it might not matter whether Peter is landing consistently or not. He’ll be able to grind out a decision by outworking the stamina deficient Chambers. More than likely, Peter will waste precious energy by trying to take Chambers out in the first several rounds.

Hopefully, for Peter’s sake, he has energy to fight hard for the rest of the fight if the knockout doesn’t come. I doubt it will. I think the extra weight will hurt Peter, who will tire out after the first few rounds and will be unable to match the speed and work rate of Chambers.

If Peter focuses on his boxing ability, he might have a decent chance but it’s doubtful he can do that with the kind of size he’s bringing into this fight.

Prediction: Eddie Chambers by 12-round decision.



Comments are closed.