Is Lamon Brewster Just Like Rocky?

While the boxing world still ponders the value of the Tyson brand, which I believe will still sell better than the next guy despite his recent knockout, Don King announced the next instalment of the heavyweight who’s who, no really who?

WBO heavyweight champ Lamon Brewster makes the first defence of his title on September 4 against Australian heavyweight Kali Meehan (who?). Brewster was quoted as saying that in order for him to be recognised as one of the best heavyweights around he needs to fight the best, and apparently Meehan is one of them.

Nicknamed “checkmate,” Meehan has a record of 29 wins and 1 loss, with 23 knockouts. He has fought nobody of note, except if you want to count the 32 seconds he spent in the ring with Danny Williams, when the latter stopped him to win the British Empire Heavyweight Title three years ago. Remember how everybody wrote Williams off as a nobody prior to the Tyson fight? What does that make this guy?

In Meehan’s last fight, in April, he stopped Damon Reed in 6 rounds. While Reed is always well-conditioned and has one of the most enthusiastic and energetically contagious temperaments around, he is a cruiserweight who from time to time moves up to the heavyweight division to get knocked out. The fact that we are now expected to believe that Meehan is one of the best around is an insult to boxing fans the world over, and emphasises why the sport is in the doldrums. It’s great that Meehan is being given an opportunity, but where is the credibility in it all? Impressive numbers on a record means squat.

On his recent visit to South Africa, Don King tried to sell Lamon Brewster to the local media as a black Rocky. Rocky, as in the character created by Sylvester Stallone. He went on with his misappropriated sales pitch saying just like Rocky, Brewster was a nobody who has battled through life to achieve his dream, that like Rocky he took on the “indestructible Russian” (Wladimir Klitscko) and against the odds defeated him. Of course, most of those in attendance were not impressed, seeing as though local hero Corrie Sanders made quicker work of the “indestructible Russian” in his previous fight.

At that stage, King was hoping to secure Sanders services, so perhaps he was thinking on the lines of a Brewster – Sanders match. What an ironic twist of fate that would have been, seeing as though Sanders relinquished the WBO crown rather than face Brewster in a low budget bout. There will be those that say on the basis of being an IBF Pan Pacific champion, Meehan has earned the right to challenge for a world title, and perhaps he has.

That doesn’t mean that anyone wants to watch it, though. Both boxers have promised that the only way they will lose is if they are killed in the ring, and Brewster has said that two coffins are going to be needed at ringside. So either we’re going to see one hell of a fight or a pretty dead one.