America's Last Heavyweight Contender: Tony Thompson

By Paul McCreath: Last Saturday night in Germany America's most recent young hopeful, Eddie Chambers went down to a disappointing defeat at the hands of the Russian rising star, Alex Povetkin in an IBF final eliminator. This defeat and especially the nature of the defeat has pretty much assigned Chambers to the scrap heap for the time being at least. Whether he can come back into contention later remains to be seen. He is young enough at 25 to come again but does he want it badly enough?

The old geezers we have come to know so well over the past few years are pretty much gone from title contention now. I hardly need to name the names, you know who I mean. It would take a miracle of unprecedented activity as well as an upset win or two for any of them to ever get another chance. Most of them have had several already and there is little demand to see them go through the motions again.

So whom do we have left? There is only one real top 10 American contender remaining, Tony Thompson. I don't count those ridiculous alphabet rankings. They have been known to rank dead people but who on earth is Tony Thompson? He certainly isn't the best known American heavyweight around. We have seen him on TV only the odd time and he is hardly taking the nation by storm.

Although Tony is a relative newcomer he is scarcely a young gun. He is already 36 years old. He stands 6 foot 5 and weighs between 240 and 250 pounds for most of his fights. At least he has the size that Chambers lacked. His pro career began in January of 2000 and he has amassed a record of 31-1 with 19 KOs.The lone defeat came in his 5th pro fight when he dropped a 4 round decision to another prospect at that time, Eric Kirkland who took a 6-0 record into the fight. The best wins on Tony's record came in the last two years. He won a 12 round decision over Dominick Guinn in June of '06 then followed that with a 10 round win over Timor Ibragimov last February. In 2007 Thompson scored his top win yet by stopping Luan Krasniqi in 5 rounds in Germany last July. This bout was a WBO eliminator and set "The Tiger"up for a title match.

When Tony will get that chance at the title and against whom he will be fighting remains to be seen. The WBO belt holder is Sultan Ibragimov,no relation by the way to Timor, but Iggy is fighting Wlad Klitschko the IBF belt holder in a unification bout on February 23. Wlad is expected to win this bout but then what happens? Wlad is obligated to defend his IBF title against Alex Povetkin but if he beats Iggy he will hold the WBO title as well and have a second mandatory due for that belt against Tony. Who will come first?

The logical thing would be for the two sanctioning bodies to reach an agreement on who gets the first shot but when have they ever agreed on anything? That is how we got 4 champions in the first place. The fairest solution would be to let Thompson go first since he has been waiting the longest but that would be too logical for boxing wouldn't it?

There remains another possibility.If the WBO and IBF do not agree,the Wlad-Iggy winner might chose to forfeit one of the belts. If it is Wlad who wins he would likely keep the belt he has had all along, the IBF one so the WBO title would become vacant. Then what happens? Obviously Tony would fight somebody for the vacant crown but who? Possibly Ibragimov would be installed as the other challenger or maybe it would be their present number two man, Alex Dimitrenko.At any rate Tony Thompson should be looking at a title fight of some kind against TBA in the near future.

What are Tony's chances? That will of course depend on who is in the other corner.He might well have a good chance against Ibragimov or Dimitrenko but I don't like his chances against Wlad. Tony is not that big a puncher and in spite of his "Tiger" nickname, he is not very aggressive either. I hope we don't get another effort like we saw from Chambers.

Once Tony gets his chance the cupboard is pretty bare. Chris Arreola shows promise but is a year or more away. No others are closer than a couple of years to title contention. Tony Thompson is the last one standing. I hope he remembers to turn off the lights when he leaves.