Green horn Greenberg dumped by Boswell

Having spent a great deal of Friday lampooning the American heavyweight picture and in particular Cedric Boswell, the 39-year-old recruited to provide a benchmark for Roman Greenberg’s often soporific progress as a heavyweight, it is with humility I report that the veteran, despite age, and the lack of anything other than a TKO defeat to Jameel McCline in 2003 on his record, proved too much for Greenberg.

Boswell demolished the highly touted prospect in the second round.

Following on from Tye Fields and Albert Sosnowski, Greenberg is possibly the most disappointing upset victim of the year such is the build-up and globe trotting education his handlers’ have afforded him. A loss to Boswell needn’t terminate his aspirations but it does apply an overdue reality check to the puffy-faced Israeli national.

As I mentioned on Friday, there have always been tales of his woes in sparring – as well as how good he can look too – but the doubts about his punch resistance have now been evidenced in the public arena. The defeat would seem less catastrophic if Greenberg had suffered it earlier in the midst of a more progressive development of his career, but it hasn’t, it’s arrived in his seventh year as a pro, aged 26, and with precious little demonstrable improvement in his technique, stamina or authority in the ring.

It makes his whole career to date appear to be a hollow threat. The voyage of a ghost ship through the heavyweight waters, sunk by the first swell it encountered.

Perhaps, with the curated 0 lost and Greenberg and his backers awoken to the true horizon of his career. He may dedicate every sinew to honing the snippets of talent he has shown thus far into something more substantive.

Occasionally calamity can provide insight and be the crucible for reinvention. But then, perhaps there has already been too much invention.

Roman Greenberg tackles Cedric Boswell

Boxing opinion and insight by David Payne

6 thoughts on “Green horn Greenberg dumped by Boswell

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  1. Andrew, boxing isn’t all about finding gems. It’s sometimes comes down to how promoters can make money. A bunch of fighter have been passed by because they pose a threat to their golden ticket.. Boswell scares most fighters and has had issues with a former promoter that stalled his career. Make no mistake, Boswell is the real deal. People are scared to fight him.

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  2. In all fairness, don’t you think, C, that Boswell has had enough time at his advanced age to be ‘discovered’?

    I beleive that the win tells us more about Greenberg’s abject ineptitude than it does Boswell’s talents, which, by this stage of his career, should be pretty well known.

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  3. I believe that Cedric Boswell is an unfound gem. In all sports arenas there are several players or athletes that aren’t given a chance to prove how GREAT they are; and Boswell is one of them. Keep your head up Ced, and stay prayed up; soon everyone will see how GREAT of a boxer you really are.

    C. Atlanta

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  4. Ant Evans comments on the boxrec.com forums with real insight in to the world of Roman Greenberg, the flatulent existence that has extinguished the wisp of ability he showed as a teenager.

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  5. And there we go.

    I had a feeling Boswell might do for Greenberg. That wasn’t because I rate Boswell as some kind of giant killing sleeper in the division, just a reflection of my belief that Greenberg has looked terrifyingly vulnerable and utterly unthreatening his entire career. I felt a Boswell — or a Whittaker or a Beck — would expose him.

    For there to be a way back for Greenberg, there has to have been something there in the first place. Which there isn’t. Stick a fork in him.

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