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Promoter Ahmet Öner announced his plans for the next years at a press conference in Hamburg today. “Boxing in Germany is pretty simple”, the Arena CEO said. “Everything is good as long as you have German fighters with championship potential.
“The only problem is that there are only very few fighters who have the talent and the charisma to become a star. In the last couple of weeks we have been looking for young, hungry guys who are already established as pros but haven’t been recognized by the broad German public. And we signed some of them.”
The best-known new athlete under the Arena banner is middleweight contender Benjamin Simon (18-1, 17 kos) who won the IBF intercontinental championship by stopping durable Fabio Liggieri (12-6-4) in Berlin last May in 6 rounds.
Simon will give his Arena debut on the undercard of the WBA middleweight championship between Felix Sturm and Giovanni Lorenzo on September 4th in Cologne, Germany, facing Juan Camilo Novoa (14-5-1) from Colombia. The show will be broadcasted live on SAT.1 in Germany and will be streamed live online on www.ran.de.
“It will be the first time for me to fight in front of almost 20,000 people and at a major show covered by TV”, says Simon. “I thank Arena, Ahmet Öner, my trainer and manager Robert Rolle and my former promoter Eva Rolle who brought me this far. I want to show a great fight and prove that I got what it takes to become champion of the world.”
Along with Simon, Arena will present cruiserweight Patrik Dobroschi, and super middleweights Mike Keta, Ronny Slomke and Dennis Ronert at the show on September 4th. “All of these guys have the potential we are looking for”, says Öner. “We hope that some of them will become main event fighters in the next months and years.”
