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.
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