Boxing Perspective: Wham, Bam, Thank You Sam!

Whew! Thank you, Sam Peter. Okay, he’s not American born, but one of the titles has been wrested away from those dreaded Russians. March 8 is the new Fourth of July. Saturday night in Cancun is the beginning of a new era. The page has turned.

Well, maybe.

Sam Peter being the next coming in the heavyweight division is as over-inflated a pronunciation as his weight. As exaggerated as HBO’s Tale of the Tape calling him 6’2″. As premature as, well, something really premature.

The “Nigerian Nightmare” was supposed to defeat Oleg Maskaev. Any thinking otherwise was misguided out of contempt for Peter or pining for days long past from Maskaev. Sure, Peter looked very relaxed throughout the fight to the point of barely sweating.

And the sudden chin issues that popped up after the McCline fight have been sorta-kinda answered (I was never convinced from that bout that there was an issue). Peter took a big straight right to the side of the head and immediately countered, showed more of the defensive ability displayed in the second Toney fight and made an effort to throw straighter punches down the middle.

But the old Sam Peter is still around, the one who throws the looping punches that have a tendency to hit an opponent in the back of the head. He clipped the back of Maskaev’s head in the third round and the Cinderella man began putting a glove up and complaining to the referee whenever Peter punched anything above his neck. If stirred, Peter will revert to the fighter he really is and tee off on whatever’s in front of him.

And that’s the problem.

While he’s become less and less the brawler he was known to be and has learned to box more and defend, Sam Peter is easily excitable. An opponent with the right game plan and a good defense could tempt him into becoming the Hulk and he needs to be more of a David Banner; calm, controlled, able to solve an opponent with intelligence and defending instead of absorbing punishment to throw wide, inaccurate punches.

The Hulk should emerge in spurts, like when he had Maskaev wobbled in the third and when he finished him off in the sixth. At this point, it’s impossible to discern which identity Peter will stick with. He seems to be thinking more and more and he has success when he applies what he’s learning in the gym, as evidenced against Toney in the second fight and in large part what he did against McCline.