By Scott Gilfoid: David Price (22-5, 18 KOs) fights Sean Turner (12-3, 8 KOs) on October 5 in heavyweight action at the Titanic Exhibition Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This is a fight that Price, 35, should win.
Turner is not in the same league as the 6’8” Price in terms of pedigree. Price is a 2008 Olympian, who had a good amateur career before turning pro. In comparison, Ireland’s Turner is more of a ham & egger type of heavyweight, who is good at soaking up punishment against up and comer fighters for them to get in rounds. Turner has losses to Nathan Gorman, Filip Hrgovic and Kamil Sokolowski. However, with Price’s chin problems and his recent run of bad luck inside the ring, his fight with Turner is more of a 50-50 affair.
If Price loses to Turner, then it’s clearly time for him to retire from boxing, because it would be pointless for him to continue his career if he can’t beat a fighter at this level. In the last five years, Price has lost to Tony Thompson [twice], Erkan Teper, Christian Hammer and Alexander Povetkin. With the exception of Teper, there’s no shame in Price losing to those guys. Those are good heavyweights that would beat a lot of guys.
Turner doesn’t fit in with those guys though in terms of talent, punching power and pedigree. As such, Price shouldn’t lose to a mediocre heavyweight like Turner. Price and Turner share a common opponent in Kamil Sokolowski. Price beat him with ease in winning a lopsided 6 round points decision last December. For his part, Turner lost to Sokolowski by a narrow 8 round decision last year in April. Never the less, you can’t entirely rule out Turner in this fight because of he’s got a little pop in his punches, and he can normally take a good shot.
If Turner can hang with Price long enough for him to gas out after three or four rounds like he did in his fights with Povetkin and Christian Hammer, then he’s got a real chance of winning the fight. Price is something awful after he gasses out. We saw that in his recent 5th round knockout loss to Povetkin last March. Price was dominated in the first two rounds, but he then came alive in the 3rd round in shaking Povetkin to his boots with a big left hook to the head. After that brief bit of success, Price gassed out and was useless in the 4th and 5th rounds. Povetkin wasn’t doing anything spectacular to batter Price in those two rounds because he didn’t need to. Price was so tired from his brief bit of energy expenditure in round 3 that he had nothing left in the 4th and 5th to worry Povetkin.
Prediction
I’m going to go out on a limb here and pick Turner by a 4th round knockout. He has a good enough chin to take Price’s best shots for the first three rounds. I see Price being totally spent going into the 4th round and having nothing left to keep the short 5’11” Turner off of him. Turner will tee off on the faded Price until he flattens him with a nice right hand to the head. Afterwards, I see Price announcing his retirement.
Other fights on the card are as follows:
Super bantamweight Tyron McCullagh (11-0) faces Josh Kennedy (11-0) in a battle of the unbeaten, and super featherweight Declan Geraghty (17-3) fights Marco McCullough (20-4).