Brewster vs. Sprott on Saturday

By Boxing News - 03/13/2009 - Comments

sprott88321By Jason Kim: Both Lamon Brewster (34-4, 30 KOs) and Michael Sprott (34-12, 16 KOs) are coming into this fight under less than impressive circumstances with both having lost two out of their last three fights respectively. On Saturday night, Brewster and Sprott meet up in an 8-round bout at the Ostseehalle, Kiel, in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany.

The fight will be on the undercard of IBF middleweight champion Arthur Abraham vs. Lajuan Simon. Brewster, who recently signed with the German based promotional team Sauerland, is hoping to resurrect his career in Germany and possibly get another fight with Wladimir Klitschko.

Both Brewster and Sprott are in their mid thirties and desperately in a need of a win order to try and get back into the top 15 in the heavyweight division. For Brewster, who previously held the WBO title and defended three times before losing it to Serguei Lyakhovich in an exciting 12-round decision loss three years ago in April 2006, he’s fallen off the map since then largely due to an eye injury to his left eye he suffered in his loss to Lyakhovich.

The injury required surgery for Brewster who took a year off from boxing to let his eye heal properly. When he returned, he took an immediate rematch with Wladimir Klitschko, whom he had defeated by a 5th round TKO in April 2004, rather than testing his eye out on lesser competition. Brewster ended up losing to Wladimir in a listless performance, getting stopped in the round after his trainer Buddy McGirt pulled the plug on him for his lack of work in the fight.

Brewster bounced back from that defeat, albeit after another year away from the sport, last August in a 5th round stoppage of Danny Batchelder. Brewster, 35, showed much of his old power in that fight, landing huge right hands, and dispatching Batchelder inside the distance.

Sprott, 34, has had an uneven career often losing just after picking up an impressive win. Indeed, Sprott has beaten quality fighters like Danny Williams and Audley Harrison only to turn around and lose his very next fight. It’s this lack of consistency that’s hurt Sprott’s career, keeping him from winning a major title. In his last three fights, he’s been beaten by Matt Skelton and Taras Bidenko while beating Zack Page in his last fight in November 2008.

Sprott is known for his heavy hands and his good right hand power, but it’s doubtful he’ll have big enough power to give Brewster any problems. In order to beat Lamon, Sprott is going to have to step up his work rate and try to hope to overwhelm Brewster with power punches. Brewster puts a lot of pressure on his opponents and unless they’re firing a lot of punches back, he’s going to nail them with his hard hooks and take them out.

Sprott has had trouble throughout his career against hard punchers and against a fighter with tremendous punching power like Brewster, Sprott will likely have big problems.