By Eric Thomas: Former WBO heavyweight champion Lamon Brewster (35-4, 30 KOs) is slowly trying to work his way back into title contention after losing his World Boxing Organization heavyweight title two years ago in a close 12 round decision loss to Sergey Lyakhovich on April 1st, 2006. Next Saturday night on May 30th, Brewster, 35, will be traveling to Finland to fight a local fighter by the name of Juho Haapoja (9-2-1, 7 KOs) in an eight-round bout at the Hartwall Arena, in Helsinki.
The Brewster-Haapoja bout will be on the undercard of the WBA heavyweight clash between champion Nikolay Valuev and champion in recess Ruslan Chagaev. This is a crucial fight for Brewster to win, because at 35, soon to turn 36, Brewster can’t afford to lose again and have to work his way back into title contention all over again.
In the loss to Lyakhovich, Brewster injured his left eye which required surgery to repair a detached retina. Brewster took off a year from boxing and let his eye heal. However, when Brewster came back after a year off he stepped right into a rematch with IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who took advantage of Brewster’s ring rust to easily beat him by a 6th round stoppage two years ago in July 2007.
Brewster seemed to lose his focus after that fight and ended up sitting out a year until coming back in August 2008 with a 5th round stoppage over Danny Batchelder. In Brewster’s most recent fight, he defeated British heavyweight Michael Sprott by an eight-round unanimous decision in March 2009.
Brewster looked like his old self again, albeit a little slower than he used to. His power looked good and he was able to keep Sprott on the run for the full eight rounds and dominate most of the exchanges. Brewster didn’t get to put show off his power, though, as Sprott stayed away from standing in front of Brewster and seemed to want no part of his big power shots.
Not much is known about Brewster’s opponent for May 30th other than he supposedly has good power. Haapoja has knocked out his last four opponents, but that’s less impressive than it sounds because the opposition has been poor to say the least.
Haapoja 10th round TKO loss to Denis Bakhtov last year in May might be the best indication of Haapoja’s true talent level. While Bakhtov is a decent heavyweight with good power, he’s not in the class of a fighter like Brewster. Additionally, Haapoja also struggled to beat journeyman Danil “Shrek” Peretyatko in April 2008, beating him by an eight round split decision.
This is a type of opponent that good fighters typically either knockout or dominate. The fact that Haapoja had to struggle to beat Peretyatko isn’t a good a sign for Haapoja as he gets ready for Brewster next week. However, Brewster is very slow and methodical heavyweight and can be outworked at times.
It takes a fighter with a good chin to beat him or one that moves well like Klitschko, Lyakhovich and Charles Shufford, all of which beat Brewster at one time or another. Brewster is still hoping that he can get a third rubber match with Wladimir Klitschko at some point in the future. However, Brewster is going to have to move much quicker with his career than he’s been doing in the past couple of years since his eye injury healed if he wants another shot at Klitschko.
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