By Rusty Nate: We are very close to the first professional fight for the latest celebrity sports switcher. The lovable and publically popular Freddie Flintoff throws his hat into the ring in just over 14 days and I wanted to hear your points of view and to let you know my thoughts.

As a bit of a back ground to Freddie Flintoff he was a world class cricketer who was a part of the England team that won the Ashes back from Australia few years ago. Freddie was certainly not the best player in world but managed to rack up a fair few fans with his work hard play hard attitude to his life.

He appeals to the normal everyday people certainly in the UK because he is very down to earth regardless of his professional success much like Ricky Hatton has done throughout his career.

The Americans reading this will probably be saying “I’ve never heard of him” or they will recognize his name but not know very much about him. I suppose its much like a British person may say “I have heard of Lebron James but I don’t know much about him”.

Basically Freddie Flintoff retired from International Cricket a few years back and has since then become a bit of loved celebrity TV icon on game shows and so forth which has done nothing but enhance his reputation with the British public.

However he has now decided that he will be trying his hand at Boxing and not just Boxing but professional Boxing. At the age of 34 and with no previous experience in competitive fighting, with no amateur bouts and with just 6 months of training with Barry Mcguigan and his son Shane, Freddie will fight for the first time in the Heavyweight Division on November 30th in Manchester.

Freddie has always been around boxing. He has trained and learnt the basics over the past 10 years as someone who loves the sport and just wanted to be around it. So I guess we could say that he is not a complete stranger to being in the ring. What he will be a stranger to is a fight with a professional. Now we all know that Freddie will not be put in the ring with an undefeated Heavyweight giant with a one punch knock out reputation. He is more than likely going to be matched with a very old journeyman that has lost 55 of 60 bouts and probably drawn the ones he hasn’t won or with a young small heavyweight that maybe has 2-3 fights and hasn’t won yet but will this really matter? They will still be pro’s that have been doing it for years!

We have no way of telling what Flintoff will be like when the bell rings on November 30th so this is all speculation but my own personal opinion is that he might have a few fights before realizing that at 34 and with the injuries that may still be a problem to him caused by his cricket career that he is unable to compete with athletes that have built their careers on fighting for the past couple of decades.

There have been some success stories to professionals switching sports to box. Curtis Woodhouse made the switch from football to boxing and recently won the vacant English title but he certainly won’t be going any higher in the sport. Anthony Mundine is another who really has done it well and since switching to boxing has even become a world champion at super middleweight.

I really wish Freddie Flintoff all the luck in the world. I have trust that Barry Mcguigan is no fool and would not risk his health if he felt Freddie was not good enough to fight professionally and I do hope that Freddie is one of the success stories of the professional sports switchers.

What’s your thought’s on Freddie and the sport switches?