This may be more of a thread for the British forum, but does anyone know what happened to this guy? I remember watching him him Groves hell for 6 rounds, until he was stopped and then went on to win the British title against Robin Reid in 2012, and nothing since. He seemed like a decent prospect at the time
KEVIN Maree still does not know whether former British champion Kenny Anderson will return to boxing when his two-year drugs ban expires later this year. Anderson beat Robin Reid to win the British super middleweight title in October 2012 but was subsequently banned after testing positive for amphetamine. The 31-year-old trained with Maree at Stirk House in Gisburn but has given no indication yet whether he will make a comeback when his ban ends in October. Anderson says he failed the test because his coffee was spiked. I speak to Kenny regularly but what his future holds I really dont know, Maree said. We dont even speak about boxing, maybe in the future well start talking about that again. Id love to get him back, theres a lot of unfinished business there, hes far more talented than people have seen yet. Hes a lot better than British title level. The ban was a massive shock for me. You dont know what a fighter does when they leave the gym, you can never be with them 24/7 but I looked at Kenny and asked, Did anything go wrong that I didnt know about? He swears to my face that there was absolutely nothing at all that he knew about, so I can only believe him. Kenny had been drug tested since he was 15 or 16 years old and hed had harder fights than Robin Reid at that stage in Robins career. He was red hot favourite. It wasnt anything performance enhancing, it was completely the opposite, to get banned for an amphetamine is the absolute last thing youd imagine. It all doesnt add up to me. Kenny has ideas about what might have happened, but its just one of those things. If hes got the motivation and the hunger hell be back, if hes not then he wont do it. The last thing I would want is Kenny in the ring not being able to perform like he can. Anderson ran George Groves close in 2010, knocking the Londoner down in the third round. Groves then pulled out of a rematch at short notice in March 2012, later going on to fight Carl Froch in front of 80,000 at Wembley. Ill go to my grave saying that if Groves hadnt pulled out of the fight we had, Kenny would have won that, Maree said. We had an unbelievable training camp and a brilliant gameplan. I think Luke Blackledge would have beaten Paul Smith for the British title but that didnt happen either and I trained Carl Frampton for his first six professional fights, now hes training for a world title in front of 50,000 people. Barry McGuigan asked me to do some work with him but later his son got involved so youre never going to compete with that. His son's a brilliant trainer himself. I still get on well with Carl, it was just circumstances and geography. You see things and think I was close there, do I give up or keep going? Im still very young at this game, still one of the youngest trainers in the country and already had unbelievable success so we will without question get where we want to be.
The first time I saw him was when he was competing in the 2006 Commonwealth games as an amateur. He actually won the gold medal that year. Guy could really crack. He stopped 3 of his 5 opponents on his way to winning gold and at least 1 or 2 of those stoppages were of the brutal variety, IIRC. That's why I remembered him, because his power really stood out. I know quality amateur Kenny Egan beat him in the unpaid ranks in a battle of the two Kenny's. He stopped him with a body shot. No shame there though as Egan is an Olympic silver medalist and a 2 x European bronze medalist. [YT]jU5TTZKr_QY[/YT]
