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Cuban heavyweight champion to compete as super heavyweight in 2005.
HAVANA. Cuban heavyweight boxing champion Odlanier Solis, who replaced retired three-time Olympic champion Felix Savon in the division, has announced he will compete as a super heavyweight in 2005. Solis, who won the Olympic heavyweight crown in Athens, relayed his decision in this week’s Trabajadores, the newspaper of the Cuban Workers Union. “Up until now I haven’t been able to box with anybody in this division, but we’ll see what happens,” Solis said in an article published Monday. “I trust in my ability to maintain speed and agility in this category.” Solis, twenty-five, will debut in the new weight division next week in a tournament in the city of Moa in Cuba’s eastern Holguin province. In addition to his Olympic title, Solis is also a two-time world champion in the ninety-one-kilogram (200-pound) weight division. Cuba has not had a strong presence in the super heavyweight division since Roberto Balado, who won the gold in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and a world championship title in 1993. Balado was killed in a car accident in Cuba in 1994.
