By Scott Gilfoid: American heavyweight Tony Thompson (37-3, 25 KO’s) weighed in today at a pudgy looking 259 lbs for his fight against once highly hyped British heavyweight David Price (15-1, 13KO’s) for their scheduled 12 round rematch at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK. Price weighed in at 250 lbs, which is pretty close to what he weighed last time he fought Thompson last February in Liverpool.
Price was knocked out in 2 rounds by Thompson in that fight, and Price attributes the loss to being overconfident. I’m not sure I buy that excuse given that I’ve already seen Price get hurt by big punchers in the amateur ranks in Bermane Stiverne and Roberto Cammarelle.
Thompson isn’t a big puncher, but I would say he’s the hardest puncher by far that Price has faced since Cammarelle blasted him out in the Olympics in 2008. Thompson is also easily the best heavyweight that Price has faced since that time; so what does that tell you.
Price had three straight years of utterly soft match-making until he was put in with Thompson and the results were inevitable. The knockout is the end result of Price messing around with a heavyweight with some talent.
It shouldn’t have happened. Price’s promoter should have been slowly building him towards fighting a guy like Thompson instead of using the likes of Matt Skelton and Audley Harrison as the transition fighters to Thompson.
That was a huge mistake because Thompson is light years ahead of those guys in terms of accomplishments and talent. Can you picture Skelton and Harrison giving Wladimir Klitschko problems like Thompson did in his first fight with the Ukrainian in 2008.
Price is pretty much up against it tonight. If he doesn’t win, he’s going to be in a bad situation career-wise that will be difficult for him to climb out of it.
Oh, I’m sure that Price’s promoter will put him back on the fodder diet, but that’ll be nothing but a foxhole for Price. He’s going to have to come out of the foxhole sooner or later to fight a live body and I suspect he’ll get blasted out as soon as he does just like he was last February.
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