WBC heavyweight champion Oleg Maskaev (34-5, 26 KOs) will be making his 2nd title defense on October 6th when he meets up with Nigerian knockout slugger Samuel Peter at Madison Square Garden, in New York. Maskaev, 38, is on a 12 consecutive win streak, dating back to February 2003. Previous to that, Maskaev had been plagued by chin problems, causing him to lose a string of vicious knockout losses to hard-punching – and severely limited – Kirk Johnson, Lance Whitaker and Corey Sanders between 2000-2001.
After the loss to Sanders, who incidentally Maskaev was dominating at the time of his stoppage loss in the 8thy round in March 2002, he as considered damaged goods by many boxing experts, that he could no longer take a hard punch. However, instead of giving up, Maskaev took a year off from boxing and let his head recover from the knockouts, something perhaps he should have done after the first of the knockout losses to Kirk Johnson, a fight that Maskaev suffered a brutal 4th round knockout loss.