By Jason Kim: Previously undefeated lightweight contender Kevin Mitchell (31-1, 23 KO’s) appeared to go through hell in his training for his fight last weekend against Michael Katsidis (27-2, 22 KO’s). In an article at the Guardian.co.uk, Mitchell said “I’m angry now. I’m pissed off with myself at how it went. Five weeks ago I finished sparring and I was blowing out my backside after about six rounds. My trainer said, ‘What the f***’as wrong with you? You haven’t prepared for this fight. ‘If you’re rowing at home, it’s not really the way to prepare for a fight. But I’m all right now though. I still stayed at my mum’s house. The last thing I want to do be doing is chopping and changing from my flat and my mum’s. It’s one of those things. People don’t get to see fighters’ lives, what goes on behind closed doors.”

It sounds like Mitchell was having major difficulties while preparing for Katsidis. However, it’s hard to say if this is the reason for Mitchell’s loss to Katsidis. I mean Mitchell never got to the point where his stamina was in question because the fight ended in the 3re round when Katsidis stopped him with a series of hard left hooks while Mitchell was trapped against the ropes. The loss seemed to be more of a case of a mental mistake that Mitchell made by taking a risk and trying to slug with Katsidis and paying the price by getting hurt by one of his hard left hooks. It was a bad mistake on Mitchell’s part to try and slug with Katsidis, because he didn’t have the frame or the power to match the bigger Katsidis in that kind of a war.

But you can’t blame Mitchell for trying. He didn’t know at this point how good his chin was. Katsidis showed him that he needs to be more careful in the future when fighting and needs to adopt a different style of fighting if he wants to have success at lightweight. Mitchell perhaps needs to consider moving down in weight to the super featherweight division, because he seems kind of slender for a lightweight and could do better at super featherweight if he can make that weight.

Mitchell says “If I want to be the best world champion out there and be on top of my game, I have to do the likes of that. Train three months abroad. He’s [Katsidis] been done [defeated] fair and square twice as well. He’s been back from it and I’ll be back as well.” Mitchell is correct about Katsidis having been beaten twice, but he wasn’t totally destroyed the way that Mitchell was. Katsidis was stopped by Joel Casamayor in the 10th round in a fight that he was ahead of at the time of the stoppage and Katsidis’ other loss was a 12 round split decision to Juan Diaz. He wasn’t blown out of the water like Mitchell was last weekend.