By William Mackay: Heavyweight Lamon Brewster (33-4, 29 KOs) will be making his comeback on Saturday night against Danny Batchelder (25-5-1, 12 KOs) in a scheduled 12-round bout for the vacant NABA heavyweight title at the Cincinnati Gardens, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Brewster, now 35, a former World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion, hasn’t seen action in over a year since losing by a sixth round stoppage to IBF heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko. In that fight, Brewster looked hardly the same fighter he had been in the past. Gone was his brawling style and in its place was a more passive, risk-adverse style of fighting as if Brewster was trying to avoid contact altogether.
There would be no problem with this style of fighting if Brewster was using a jab and foot movement to get in position to land shots against the 6’6″ Klitschko. However, Brewster did little punching and seemed unable to pull the trigger. His new trainer Buddy McGirt had been brought in to teach him how to avoid taking so much punishment, something that had been a factor in Brewster experiencing a detached retina of his left eye while losing his WBO world title to challenger Serguei Lyakhovich in April 2006.