AUSTIN LOST IN HEAVYWEIGHT SHUFFLE

AUSTIN LOST IN HEAVYWEIGHT SHUFFLE





Cleveland, Ohio heavyweight Ray Austin must be wondering what is going
on. Just last year he outpointed the highly regarded Owen Beck. Now where do
you think Mr. Beck is going to be June 3rd ? Well...He'll be in Germany to
face the newly crowned WBA titleholder Nicolay Valuev. Ray Austin is
probably thinking , " Why not me " .

Austin has paid his dues and he has earned the right to fight for a
piece of the title, any piece ! Ray has had 30 fights and since 2002 has
fought draws with Lance Whitaker, Zuri Lawrence and Larry Donald. Add in his
win over Beck and you can make a solid case that Ray deserves a shot at the
title more then Beck.

The WBC title will probably be held up for a while as champion Hasim
Rahman is meeting Oleg Maskaev. The winner is to meet James Toney. What in
the world did Maskaev do to earn a title shot ?

Chris Byrd takes on Wladimir Klitschko this weekend for the IBF title.
There is a possibility of Ray meeting the winner of this bout. Sergei
Liakhovich is the WBO title holder. Sergei beat Lamon Brewster to win the
title in Cleveland and he won a lot of fans there.

Sergei-vs-Austin could be an interesting and Cleveland would be a
perfect place to hold it. Rumor has it though that Sergei is going to meet
Kevin McBride. So for the time being Ray appears to be frozen out of the
heavyweight picture.

Ray sports a fine 24-3-3 record with sixteen knockouts against some
tough opposition. I can see now why maybe he's being avoided.

It's easy to get lost in the shuffle, when you suck.

Ray Austin just got beat by Calvin Brock didn't he?

http://boxrec.com/boxer_display.php?boxer_id=016778

I've seen Ray Austin once or twice, but I wasn't impressed by anything other than his size and durability. He's 6'6" but slow and not very energetic, preferring to lay around or clinch on the inside. Maybe he's more worthy than Owen Beck as far as getting a shot at Valuev, but he's the opposite of what the heavyweight division needs, which is full of huge, slow guys with mediocre skills who lazily lay on each other. Maybe that's why he's not getting offers for fights. Promoters know how dull he is.

That's all I know about him. When a guy does a lot of clinching on the inside I usually remember that about him even when everything else is a little hazy.

Oh yeah, I remember 1 more thing. I read awhile ago that he was criticizing Wladimir Klitschko for having a weak chin, and he said something like "you've got to have a chin in this business or you should look for something else to do".

Austin apparently has some punching power with 16 kos in 24 wins and just stopped Jeremy Bates in the 2nd round earlier this month.

Here we go. If you're dying of curiosity about the man you can read this:

http://www.sho.com/site/boxing/profi...=10&fight=3859