By William Mackay: 6’8″ British heavyweight David Price (9-0, 7 KO’s) has been Odlanier Solis’ chief sparring partner to help get the Cuban ready for his bout this Saturday against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko (41-1, 38 KO’s) in Cologne, Germany. Price, a 2008 Olympian boxer, was very impressed with the skills of Solis and is giving him a good chance at beating the 39-year-old Vitali on Saturday. Price sees Solis as using WBA heavyweight champion David Haye’s strategy that he employed to beat 7-foot Nikolay Valuev in 2009 by moving around the ring a lot and jumping in to land some shots and then getting away. Price thinks that Solis can win rounds this way against the taller, slower Vitali.

Price said “I wouldn’t be surprised if he [Solis] fought similar to what David Haye did against Nikolai Valuev and used footwork to stay out of trouble and nick rounds. When we were sparring his trainer would be telling him to do all sorts with his feet and that did bamboozle me.”

Price also points out that Vitali has lost a lot of hand speed since his fight with Lennox Lewis in 2003, and believes that Solis might be in the position to pull off an upset on Saturday night. To be sure, Vitali is a lot slower than he once was. However, Solis is going to have to look worlds better than he did in his last two fights for him to exploit Vitali’s diminished hand speed because Solis didn’t look like anything special. Solis may be able to give Price problems but we’re talking about a guy with less than 10 fights under his belt and someone nowhere near the same class as Vitali. Price would likely being impressed if he were the sparring partner for a lot of heavyweight contenders at this point in his career.