By Dave Lahr: The bout between unbeaten heavyweight contenders Odlanier Solis (14-0, 10 KO’s) and Kevin Johnson (22-0-1, 9 KO’s) has reportedly been called off. The reason for the cancellation of the bout is because the 30-year-old Johnson is ranked number # 6 in the World Boxing Council, and is within grasp of a title shot against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko.
Johnson’s team don’t want to take a risky bout against the 29-year-old Solis, who is a 2004 heavyweight Olympic Gold Medalist from Cuba. This was a fight that was very evenly matched and it was difficult to tell which fighter would emerge victorious in this fight.
It’s unclear whether Johnson will just sit and wait for a title shot against the September 26th bout between WBC title challenger Chris Arreola and champion Vitali Klitschko, or whether Johnson will seek out someone easier than Solis. Klitschko – or whoever comes out on top in the Arreola fight – might not be interested in fighting Johnson next.
There would appear to be better options for a decent paying fight against someone like James Toney rather than a fight straight away against Johnson. Frankly, a fight between Johnson and Klitschko doesn’t strike me as being an interesting one because Johnson isn’t much of a puncher and tends to throw his jab a lot. He’s got a great jab, but not much of a right hand.
Johnson can’t afford to wait around for a long time, because he hasn’t fought since stopping Devin Vargas in May.
Johnson looked great in that, even though he was out-worked in the first two rounds by Vargas. Johnson came back and dropped Vargas in the 3rd round with a big right hand. And then later in the 5th, Johnson knocked Vargas down with a hard combination.
Vargas hurt his left ear in the round, likely from one of Johnson’s lopping hooks that he was nailing Vargas with again and again in the round. In the 6th round, Johnson hurt Vargas with a nice left hand and then began to batter him against the ropes until finally Vargas’ corner threw in the towel to have the fight stopped. The performance was one of Johnson’s better ones during his six year pro career.
Solis has a fight scheduled on October 10th against a still to be determined opponent. For a fighter that has put on a great deal of weight since turning pro, Solis still looks remarkably fast and very skillful for someone who looks to be at least 30 to 40 pounds overweight.
Only 6’1”, Solis has put on roughly sixty pounds of fat and some muscle since leaving the amateur ranks, where he fought at 200. There was talk of Solis working on his conditioning and getting his weight down to a more manageable number, say 240, but unfortunately, Solis is continuing to get bigger and bigger with each fight.
In his last bout, Solis weighed 262 in June. Surprisingly, he looked great in stopping Dominique Alexander in the 1st round. It would have been interesting to see how well Solis had fought had the bout gone 10 rounds instead of just one. With as much fat that Solis had on him, I imagine he would have labored in the later rounds.