Lennox Lewis surprised he’s being blamed for David Price’s loss

By Boxing News - 07/08/2013 - Comments

price555By Scott Gilfoid: Lennox Lewis says he was only given 3 weeks to train former British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion David Price (15-2, 13 KO’s) for his fight last Saturday night against Tony Thompson (38-3, 26 KO’s) at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK.

Lewis says he wanted to train the 29-year-old Price for 5 weeks to get him ready for this important bout, but was only allowed to get a mere 3 weeks. Needless to say it’s almost impossible to make any lasting changes to a fighter after only 3 weeks working with them unless they have a brain like a sponge and can learn things quickly.

Usually the younger fighters are the ones that a lot more moldable in changing their fighting style. Price is a bit up there in age and about to hit 30. It’s not usual for fighters that old to be slow in making any lasting changes to their style with just a few weeks of work.

Lewis said on his twitter, “Maloney’s blaming ME for this loss? Incredible! I asked for 8 weeks training.. He gave me 3. David is a great guy &he can rebound from this but there r sacrifices that have 2b made 2 take ur game 2next level. Price put Thompson down in the second rnd… Of course I would tell him to finish him off… That’s what ur supposed to do… I will always support @DavidPrice_1.”

Lewis is right. He did the right thing in shouting at Price to try and finish off Thompson after he knocked him down in the 2nd round. Price had the bad luck that his knockdown occurred in the last part of the 2nd round, enabling Thompson to make it out of the round.

Thompson recovered from the shot in between rounds and surprisingly went right after Price in the 3rd. Price met him in the center of the ring and the two of them went toe-to-toe in both the 3rd and 4th rounds. At some point, Price needed to figure out that Thompson wasn’t hurt and he wasn’t going to finish him off.

That takes ring IQ. I’ve seen fighters like Wladimir Klitschko score a knockdown and briefly go after his opponent to try and finish them off, but if he saw the guy wasn’t that hurt, he’d stop unloading on him. We didn’t see that with Price. He kept firing punches and ended up exhausting himself by the end of the 4th. Price had nothing left in the 5th round and finished off by Thompson.



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