No one would blame heavyweight David Price (15-2, 13 KO’s) is he were to choose to retire from the sport following his 5th round stoppage defeat the hands of Tony Thompson (38-3, 26 KO’s) last Saturday night, but that’s not what Price intends on doing.
Price is going to stick it out with his career and keep improving his game to get back up into the heavyweight world rankings.
Price said to Sky Sports “I’m trying to come to terms with what’s just happened again. I’ll just have to look back at it next week…another major disappointment. It was a big occasion so I was more tense than usual so maybe it was that. I don’t know.”
Price certainly looked nervous before the fight. At the last press conference and at the weigh-in, Price looked like a doomed man. He wasn’t smiling, and was constantly looking downward at the ground. It appeared that Price wasn’t mentally engaged for the fight.
In contrast, Thompson was smiling, talking the audience and looking supremely confident the whole time. We saw much of the same in the dressing room before the fight. Thompson was singing; while Price looked scared out of his wits.
Price is going to need some major work on his game if he wants to make something out of his career. His promoter Frank Maloney already said there won’t be another rematch against Thompson; so that’s one positive that Price has going for him right now.
It looks like Maloney is going to be a lot more thoughtful when it comes to matching Price from now on. He’s talking about wanting to bring him back to the domestic level and go from there to build him back up. But even that might not be easy unless Maloney steers Price around British heavyweights like Dereck Chisora, David Haye and Tyson Fury. There had been talk of matching Price against Chisora and Fury in the past, but that obviously isn’t going to happen now after these two defeats at the hands of Thompson.
It goes without saying that Price needs a new trainer and he needs to work on his conditioning in a big way. The mistakes that Price made in both losses to Thompson were things that a good trainer would have taught him to avoid. If his trainer is telling teaching him these things and he’s simply not following instructions then perhaps he needs a different trainer that is more firm with him. Sometimes a fighter needs a trainer that is more vocal before they start paying attention.