By Allan Fox: Unbeaten heavyweight knockout artist Leif Larsen (16-0, 13 KO’s) will be facing substitute opponent Jason Gavern (21-11-4, 10 KO’s) this Friday in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Madrid Arena, in Madrid, Comunidad de Madrid, Spain. This was supposed to be a fight between Larsen and IBF Inter-Continental heavyweight champion Odlanier Solis. However, Solis backed out because he didn’t want to risk his December 22nd fight against heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek.
It was an easy decision obviously on the pudgy 32-year-old Solis’ part because he would have likely taken some mammoth shots from Larsen, who can really punch and there would have been serious questions whether Solis would have made it out of the first few rounds in that fight. At best, Solis would survive and win the fight but would be badly marked or cut up by Larsen. That in turn would have wiped out Solis’ fight with Adamek.
Larsen, 37, will have to be content with fighting 35-year-old Gavern, who has lost four out of his last five fights. Gavern’s a journeyman and he’ll only be able to give Larsen a test to show boxing fans where he’s at in comparison to the other guys that Gavern has lost to recently. Gavern has lost to Mariusz Wach, Alexander Ustinov and Steve Cunningham in his last three fights. It would be interesting to see if Larsen can do a better job against Gavern compared to those guys.
It’s not easy to stop Gavern early in his fights, and the guys that have stopped him in the past have had to go at least until the 6th round to get him out of there. If Larsen can smash Gavern quickly it’ll say a lot about the kind of power that Larsen has going for him.
Larsen has been knocking out everybody in the early rounds as of late. He stopped Danny Williams in two, Gabor Farkas in two, Ivica Perkovic in five and Mercelo Lamadrid in five. As you can see, Larsen has faced a lot of no name fighters and that could be a problem for him against Gavern, because he’s better than most of these guys.
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