K A T S I D I S - Go You Good Thing! - G O !

This article from The Brisbane Times is about equal parts Michael Katsidis & Anthony Mundine. Kats' thoughts are well worth a read:


Article by Phil Lutton - Brisbane Times - Feb 17th 2011

As a humbled Anthony Mundine prepares for a rematch with his TV star vanquisher Garth Wood, one of Australia's best fighters, Michael Katsidis, says the reality is Mundine's dream of a big-time US breakthrough are all but over.

Mundine's rematch with Wood in Brisbane on April 13 will be the talk of Australian boxing circles but Katsidis, the Toowoomba slugger gearing up for another Las Vegas blockbuster when he meets rising superstar Robert "The Ghost" Guerrero on April 9, says Mundine's virtual anonymity in America means a breakthrough fight at age 35 remains a bridge too far.

Wood, the former South Sydney Rabbitoh, shocked Mundine with a fifth-round knockout in December. He earned the chance to fight Mundine after winning reality TV show The Contender.

Read Phil Lutton's in-depth interview with Michael Katsidis about how the death of jockey brother Stathi is driving him to become a world champion at lunchtime today on brisbanetimes.com.au.

With neither fighter being presented with a great deal of options, the pair had little choice but to meet again in the ring, with the Brisbane Entertainment Centre - where Mundine has enjoyed success in the past - the chosen venue.

The fight will make headlines in boxing-starved Australia but won't raise an eyebrow in the US according to Katsidis, the world-rated warrior still recovering from the death of brother and best mate Stathi, a star jockey found dead in his Brisbane home last October.

Katsidis has no beef with Mundine and has supported him the in the past, tipping his victory against Danny Green when the pair met in 2006. But the 30-year-old lightweight contender, who lost a war to Mexican hero Juan Manuel Marquez in a world title fight in November, says Mundine remains a non-entity in big-money American boxing circles.

He said a fighter like Cameroon-born Australian Sakio Bika, who won the American version of the same show that gave Wood his shot at Mundine, was afforded much more respect after taking the leap and pitting himself against world-class opponents. He backed Bika, who fights at Mundine's former division of super middleweight, would easily eclipse the former rugby league star if the pair ever crossed paths in the ring.

"I really don't pay too much attention if it's not on the world level. I think of a guy like Sakio Bika. He's the guy fighting at the world level. I'm more interested in the best in the world," Katsidis said.

"It may be a talked about thing in Australia. I don't know how he looks at all at the moment. I don't think he'd last two rounds with Bika. That's just to be honest. That's no hard feelings or no personal grudge there at all.

"When there was the Green-Mundine bout, on a performance level I thought Mundine would clearly win. There's nothing personal at all. I just think Sakio would take the guy in a couple of rounds."

It was a circumspect Mundine who promoted his re-match with Wood, admitting he felt flat, lacked motivation and prepared poorly for the first fight. As it transpired, Wood's awkward brawling style and determination resulted in a fifth-round stoppage.

"I fell into the fight through obligation. It wasn't a fight that I was looking forward to or would have if it wasn't through obligation. But now that he has earned his right from what happened last time, automatically he is in the picture now," Mundine said.

"It's a great rivalry for Australian boxing. I'm all about helping the sport and fighting the best and he is one of the strongest contenders out there, so I just need to get myself ready.

"As long as I'm at my best, he's not in the same class as me. I'm focused on short-term goals and that is to beat Garth. Everyone knows what I want to do but I can't look past anything else but beating Garth Wood."

Even Mundine's famous fighting father Tony had urged Mundine to sharpen his act after a run of less-than-threatening opponents blunted the trademark crispness that defined his early career.

"My dad will tell you that I've probably been a bit pigheaded, especially over the last two years when I didn't lose for a long time," Mundine said. "Even though I saw negatives in some of my performances, I was still winning so I didn't really address any problems. I didn't study films, I didn't study myself. Garth made me pay the price."

Wood, whose victory has catapulted him into the top 10 in the WBA middleweight rankings, said he was evolving after each fight and was confident of felling Mundine for a second time.

"I'm only early in my career and I'm all about reinventing myself each fight," he said. "Although he might be able to study tapes of me ... every session I'm improving out-of-sight - especially mentally.

"So if that was already a problem for him in the first fight, it's going to be double."

 

It's obviously very unfashionable to be a Mundine nut-hugger in 2011 -they have gone very quiet Beaver!

The only noise some of them are making is with their footsteps. If you listen carefully you can just hear them, along way in the distance.

 

The fight of his life

from The Brisbane Times - 17th Feb 2011.

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Driven by the memory of brother Stathi, boxer Michael Katsidis will feel invincible next time he enters the ring. From his training base in Thailand, he tells Phil Lutton of his dream of bringing big-time boxing back to Australia.

Can you punch away the pain of losing a loved one?

Banish it from your soul through sheer physical torture?

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Maybe you could infuse it with your sweat and blood, and run and skip and pound heavy bags until it flows out of your pores?

You can't. Michael Katsidis tried. For once, the excruciating torture the lightweight boxing champion subjects himself to didn't produce the desired result.

So you do this. With the biggest moment of your professional life just around the corner, you build a wall, an emotional partition that segregates the burning agony of loss from the rest of you.

Then, when the times comes, you let the sadness flow like a raging river.

For Katsidis, a man mourning the death of brother and best friend Stathi, that time has finally arrived.

When star jockey Stathi Katsidis was found dead in his Brisbane home last October, sports and racing fans were shocked and saddened.

Almost immediately, thoughts turned to Michael, a world-rated fighter whose explosive style has made him a huge hit in the lucrative American market. The brothers from Toowoomba were as thick as thieves through their lifelong ups and downs. What now for him?

Talk about forks in the road. Just weeks from the fight of his life, a Las Vegas blockbuster with Mexican kingpin Juan Manuel Marquez, Michael made the heartbreaking decision to continue his training in the unforgiving humdity of South-East Asia and miss Stathi's funeral in their home town.

He sent a message to be read out on the day. He hoped to send another one when he met Marquez. From the moment his manager's phone rang with the awful news, everything would be for Stathi.

But the grief was sealed up in a mental box and set aside away until the fight was over. He did this confident in the knowledge Stathi would never have wanted him to lose an opportunity that could define his career.

The eventual loss to Marquez in a lightweight world title fight came in the eighth round but Katsidis lost no admirers. Not only did he earn respect for continuing with the fight in the first place, the brutal battle was named HBO's Fight of the Year.

That was in November. Now as he prepares for his next assignment in April, Katsidis has had time to shed his weight in tears. The burden lifted from his shoulders, he says, is nothing short of miraculous.

“We had the grieving process – with my brother passing it's been very tough. We've had a good couple of months since. I had to hold off from the grieving process to actually go ahead and fight. [Now] I've had plenty of time to spend with my family and let my emotions roll,” Katsidis says.

“It just feels like a God-given gift. Here I am – I've got a free run. It's so much easier to train, so much easier to do the hard jobs that I do. I don't have that grieving process on my shoulders.

“Put yourself in my shoes. If it was your own brother, or your own family member, it's a very important event in your life and the mental pain you have to endure – it's a huge, huge thing.

“And because I have gone through it, it's a great step. Now I'm a lot stronger. What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger and that's exactly what has happened here.”

Katsidis, now 30, is not the type of guy to make excuses. Not in November and not now. Even with some prodding from the ringside commentators at the MGM Grand, Katsidis wouldn't use the spectre of Stathi's death as a factor in his defeat.

“I promised myself I wouldn't go that way. It's not in my making to say that. It was almost like the HBO commentators wanted me to go that way after the fight,” he says.

“You don't have to say it. People know what was going on. I really think the telling factor in how close I am to becoming the best lightweight in the world revolves around my next performance. “Do I have it? Is it there? Once again, the stakes are increased, the plot thickens.”

It does indeed. Pain can be a fighter's best friend and, in that regard, Katsidis has more than enough fuel to stoke his fires.

His intended victim is Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero, the number two-ranked lightweight who many believe can be a future superstar of the sport; a Mayweather or De la Hoya. The pair will meet in Las Vegas on April 9 at the MGM Grand, the same venue were Katsidis carried the weight of the world on his shoulders against Marquez.

“He's an up-and-coming fighter. In America, there's a lot of interest. They want him to come up in a big way. If he gets a win against someone like me, it puts him with the biggest names out there,” Katsidis says.

"But we've done harder work than they consider could be done. When they [think] we can't do more, we dig deep and do more. I work and I work and I work and then we work even harder.”

The final goal is a rematch with Marquez, who at 37 is finding himself in war after war in the flourishing lightweight division. Katsidis believes his time has come and he is the rightful heir to the undisputed lightweight throne.

Some in the US regard him as a “gatekeeper” – the type of unrelenting opponent genuine champions must pass through if they are to be afforded any real esteem.

First crippled but now hardened and driven by the tragedy of the past four months, Katsidis' dreams are much more expansive than being an obdurate obstacle in someone else's journey.

Not only does he want a rematch with Marquez – who he believes would move mountains to avoid another fight – but he wants to bring world-rated, primetime boxing back home to Queensland.

For a country that has been jaded by farces like the Danny Green-Paul Briggs fiasco, local boxing fans should be desperate for Katsidis to make good on his word.

“It's got to be known, his trainer has said Juan Manuel Marquez will never fight Michael Katsidis again. He has said it, he can't deny it. He's been hurt worse than he's ever been hurt. That just gives me more motivation to force his position,” Katsidis says.

“It gives me more encouragement to get this title so I can come home and put on a really big show. I'm getting to the stage in my career where I've got the attention. I've got HBO in America. When I pull off this next one, get that attention, draw it back to Australia, it would just be a great thing to have a show in Brisbane.

“I'm due for a bit of luck. I'm going to make that happen. But I really think you make your own luck. That's why I'm here sweating it out in Thailand.”

 

'Katsidis v Guerrero will be broadcast in Australia via Main Event on the 10th of April'.


Katsidis vs. Guerrero on 4/9

from our own East Side site - 20th Feb 2011

Michael Katsidis is about to return to the ring after month’s rattled with up’s and downs. Only 4 weeks after his brother’s tragic passing, Katsidis went on to fight Juan Manual Marquez for the unified Lightweight Title, a fight that he honourably lost in 9 rounds. Although the fight didn’t go the way Katsidis hoped, he still won the love of fans and subsequently the coveted HBO fight of the Year award.

Katsidis is now ready to fight former two-division champion Robert “the Ghost” Guerrero in Las Vegas, on April 10, a fight that manager/trainer Brendon Smith says he can, and will win. He also believes the fight will potentially be for an interim lightweight title.

"We believe the fight will end up being for the Interim world title" Smith said.

Robert Guerrero is a southpaw with an impressive record of 28-1-1, 18 Kos, he is a former IBF featherweight and super featherweight world champion. His last two wins were over Vicente Escobedo and Joel Casamayor, both of whom have also fought Katsidis, with Casamayor being the first professional to beat the Australian.

“I’m excited to be back in the ring, I’m hungry to get the title back, and I’m confident that I can tear through Guerrero so I can once again cement my place at the top of the lightweight division” Katsidis said, “The fight will be action packed as always, and one I want the Aussie people to support me in”.

Katsidis v Guerrero will be broadcast in Australia via Main Event on the 10th of April, tickets have gone on sale for the fight named “Action Heroes”. The card also features a fight between Mexico's numerous world title-winner Erik Morales and Argentina's Marcos Maidana.

 

The answers are found in the fine print in the BoxRec entries:

http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_id=67437&cat=boxer

(head clash & positive steroid test)