David Price pays the “PRICE” for lack of defense

By Boxing News - 02/25/2013 - Comments

price73By Gari Jones: Since his shock defeat to Tony Thompson (W37, KO25, L3, D0) on Saturday, David Price (W15, KO13, L1, D0) has been rather quiet. Though question marks are being raised over his chin, I agree with him that long term this loss won’t do much to his prospects providing he gets back to winning ways in his next fight. It neither a lack of power nor his chin, it was Price’s defense that let him down.

The 1st round of that fight was nothing to shout about, both fighters just feeling each other out and looking to establish some rhythm. The final 30 seconds did offer some action, both fighters getting each other in the corner and trading a few glancing blow but nothing more.

The second round Price looked to control the centre of the ring, using his long left arm to measure up Tony but he stayed outside of range. By 1:47 on the timer, Price did land a big right hand to which Tony covered up well. Price now being spurred on by the crowd did look to do some damage. This is where I saw Price’s lack of defense. His chin was totally exposed when going for the big blows leaving himself so wide open he was almost leading with his face.

Tony was looking to counter at this point. Covering up well and looking through his guard he did throw a left hand but David avoided it. I did sense here that if Price was not careful he was going to get caught.

Having asserted a little dominance you could see Price was very eager to finish the fight, trying to land the big right shot bouncing on his feet and measuring up Thompson. If you watch carefully from 1:21 to 1:14 on the clock Price has his left hand down and is keeping it there. Though Thompson was out of reach, for me Price was not thinking about his guard and he was losing focus at this time.

And sure enough 15 seconds later Tony went to his right, caught David Price flat footed and landed a lovely right hand counter punch GOOD NIGHT Price. Though David did manage do get up it was only to be doing a good impression of the drunken man walk.

Every fighter learns a lot from a loss and what needs to happen now is that David needs to get more ring time under his belt. He will have to learn to pace himself and keep the fight under his control and not get carried away.

Price may have had 16 professional fights but he’s boxed only 41 rounds (that is only 2.5 rounds a fight). His defensive work has got to improve as he really showed a lot of errors during those 2 rounds. I reckon if David took a leaf out of Wladimir Klitschko’s book and learned to lead with the Jab plus to stay focused on defense, then he really could be a dominant force in the Heavyweight scene. He’s only 29 years old so time is really on his side.



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