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A strict upbringing prepared Andrei Mikhailovich for a title shot against Janibek Alimkhanuly

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Modern Zealand middleweight contender Andrei Mikhailovich says he always knew he would fight in Las Vegas.

The 26-year-old Aucklander will have a chance to fulfill his dream when he faces 160-pound number one Janibek Alimkhanuly (15-0, 10 KO) for the IBF and WBO belts in Vegas, Nevada, on July 13.

“I feel fantastic. I feel great, I feel alive, I feel ready. This is my moment, this is my destiny. This is what I have trained for years. If a city was built for me to fight in, it would be Las Vegas,” said Mikhailovich (21-0, 13 KO).

“I’m a born artist and I just do it, baby. For me it’s an amazing thing that I can fight for the world title, but it’s not the most significant thing in the world. It’s amazing, but for me it’s just another day in paradise.”

Mikhailovich began his life in a world away from the radiant lights of the Las Vegas Strip. Born in Saint Petersburg in post-Soviet Russia in 1997, as a child he was sent to an orphanage along with his twin brother Nikolai and given up for adoption. Kiwi couple Marcel and Paula Driessen adopted them as toddlers and raised them in the Land of the Long White Cloud.

“If you really put it into perspective, when I was born, I was a baby that my mother didn’t need or want at all,” Mikhailovich said. “And I understand that after the fall of the Soviet Union they couldn’t feed their children or anything like that. I don’t know the whole story, but I came from absolutely nothing, right? If you think about it in this context, I wasn’t loved for the first 18 months of my life – sure, people took care of me in the orphanage and stuff like that – but from that point on, I had this journey where I had to really discover who I was.

“I haven’t met people who say that’s who you really are. I had to go on this journey of self-discovery. I forget who I am and what I like about myself. And I think that’s why when I win, people will be shocked and say, “How did you do it?” Trust me, brother, the battle I’ve had in my life has lasted much longer than 36 minutes.

“The shit I’ve been through in life, the pain I’ve felt, the ups and downs and all that, it’s just another day to me, man.”

There was intense sibling rivalry in his home. As children, Andrei and Nikolai often argued, so he became accustomed to the bumps and bruises that the twin brothers often exchanged.

“Let’s imagine two Russian twins growing up together in a house. Do you think it will be an airy, fairy-tale, loving relationship? No, buddy, it’s not,” he recalled.

However, his first contact with boxing came much later, when he was a teenager, after a chance encounter in an alley.

“It sounds like nonsense, but it happened,” Mikhailovich said. “I got into a lot of fights at school. I got into fights at school. I was known for it. But one day I was walking down the aisle and a guy, bigger than me, nudged me with his shoulder and asked, “What are you going to do about it?” I didn’t know what to do, and then he stubbed out his cigarette on my chest. Simply put, this is a true story. I felt so scared that I went and took up boxing.

“I fell in love with boxing and that’s it. I never saw this guy again. I actually mentioned him maybe a few years ago and thanked him for it because he was the reason I got into the sport.

Mikhailovich joined Isaac Peach’s gym in Auckland at the age of 15, and the rest, as they say, is history. Peach, a former boxer turned trainer, became something of a father figure to Mikhailovich, who learned from him the dedication and discipline it takes to succeed in the prizefight.

“I feel like we have a great relationship,” said Mikhailovich, whose stablemates include David Delicate, Jerome Pampellone and Mea Motu.

“There is a huge level of respect between us. I respect him as a coach, as a friend and I listen to him. But I think the most significant thing is that I needed a man like that in my life. I had problems with authority figures and people telling me what to do. He found the right path for me and we just have a great relationship.

“The most significant thing I will say about our relationship is that we trust each other. I trust him in everything. He knows everything about me. When I go to the gym, he calls me and tells me by my eyes whether I’m going to have a good or bad day. He knows me better than anyone else.

“One thing I will say about his training is that he is tough but fair. He knows when he needs to kick my butt and scold me, he knows when I’m having a good day and he’ll tell me I’m doing great.

Mikhailovich turned professional six years after a moderately successful amateur career. He won the national crown in his 13th professional fight and quickly moved on from there, winning regional titles in international fights that gave him a foothold in the WBO and IBF rankings. The usually sturdy Venezuelan Ernesto Espana lasted less than three rounds against him in June 2022, while another Venezuelan, Edison Saltarin, exposed him in the first set before succumbing in five frames last April.

In the first moments of this fight, the left-handed Saltarin threw a right hook, at the same time Mikhailovich threw a lob and a right hand. Saltarin’s punch got there first. Mikhailovich found himself on the canvas.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” Mikhailovich whispered. “Before this fight, me and my friends came up with a plan to throw some soap into the ring so that I would go down in the first round, really dramatic and shitty. So for the first 10 seconds of the fight, that’s what they did. They threw some soap in the ring and I fell over and it got really dramatic. And the hat is exactly what I wanted. This made the fight dramatic. This is what really happened.”

Mikhailovich laughs.

“But no, it’s all or nothing, brother,” he said. “I didn’t even get hurt. I was more unnerved. As I was descending, I thought: “There is no way that I, Andrei Mikhailovich, am falling, falling!” When I got up, I didn’t feel hurt. Honestly, I thought it was more about balance.

“If you watch the replay of the knockdown, I actually put my hand down to brace myself. When I got up, the guy just ran at me, huffing and puffing and throwing all these wild punches. I thought, “You’ve got another 21 minutes with me, buddy.”

Saltarin attacked. Mikhailovich withstood the pressure. He then launched his own counterattack, attacking the Venezuelan’s liver like Hannibal Lector. The body attack paid off. Saltarin was stopped in the fifth place.

Mikhailovich showed great composure, dealing with complex moments at the beginning of the fight. Saltarin, like Alimkhanuly, is a southpaw.

“I am very lucky,” he said. “I started boxing when I was 15 and I think after two months of boxing I broke my right arm, so I had to learn to employ my left hand. Since then, I have always had an exceptionally forceful left hand. Over the last four or five years, I have developed the ability to change positions quite comfortably. I’m probably a failure at the gym 60 or 70 percent of the time.

“When it comes to perspectives and ideas on how to fight a southpaw, you can read and study as much as you want. I think three of my last five fights have been against southpaws.

“But it’s like this, man. If you think it’s going to be a substantial deal, it’s going to be a substantial deal. If you don’t think it will be a substantial deal, it won’t be a substantial deal.

“It all depends on conceptualization. If I decide this table is too hefty for me to lift, it will be much too hefty to lift. But if I think it’s just a table, I’m sure with the right attitude and leverage I can move it.

“Don’t make it too complicated, man.

“We overcomplicate a lot of things in life and make a substantial deal out of it. That’s why many fighters are drowning while fighting for the world title. They go through this huge trial: “I’m fighting King Kong!” They have to prepare for King Kong, but King Kong is a gorilla; I’m just fighting a man.

Despite his self-confidence, Mikhailovich does not underestimate his next opponent. Alimkhanuly has a well-deserved reputation as one of the most hazardous men in boxing. The 31-year-old Kazakh is a highly qualified technician who has fought over 300 amateur fights. As a professional, he dominated virtually all of his opponents with his speed, angles and clever punch selection.

Mikhailovich knows what he’s getting into.

“First of all, I will say that I have a lot of respect for Janibek,” he said. “I think he’s a fantastic player. I think he is an amazing midfielder, has a wealth of amateur experience and is the unified world champion for a reason. I will have to raise the bar and hit all the I’s, cross all the T’s and look under every rock. So obviously I have to be more diligent, I have to be extremely focused, 24/7, 365, but it’s all part of the job, man.

“But for me, the excitement is that I can focus on the next level, focus on some other things, stylistic issues with this fight. And yes, in the end it’s just a fight. No matter what’s going on or what’s at stake, it’s just me and him in the ring and whatever happens, happens. He’ll find what he wants to do, and I’ll find what I want to do, and we’ll just mix and match.

“It’s just a game of chess and whoever gets checkmate is the winner.”

Getting to where he is has been quite a challenge for Mikhailovich. Questions about his identity plague him everywhere. At one point in his career he was known as “The Renegade”. In another he was “Russian”.

Now he seems at peace with who he is.

“Renegade” was a period in my life. Russian was a period in my life, he explains. “Now you can just call me Andrei fucking King Mikhailovich.”

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Boxing

Noel Mikaeljan-Ryan Rozicki The fight for the WBC cruiserweight title will take place on October 4

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The fight scheduled for last weekend has already hit the auction block.

The Ring has confirmed that the WBC cruiserweight title fight between Noel Mikaeljan and Ryan Rozicki is up for bidding again. The two were scheduled to meet on September 28 at the Don King Productions concert at Casino Miami Jai Alai in Miami, Florida.

No reason was given for the program’s cancellation. Either way, it was enough that King, Mikaeljan’s promoter, was found to have reneged on the original contract.

Rozicki is promoted by Daniel Otter’s Three Lions Promotions.

The fallout was the fourth time the fight missed its scheduled date. There were problems with a cut suffered by Mikaeljan (27-2, 12 knockouts) during training camp, which disrupted plans for their June 7 meeting. It was agreed to postpone the date in exchange for finding a novel opponent for Rozicki.

Three postponements later, the patience of Rozicki’s team had long since run out.

“We now hope that we win the bid and Ryan becomes the WBC world champion,” Otter told The Ring.

Mikaeljan, rated 200 by The Ring at No. 2, was scheduled to defend his title for the first time. The 33-year-old Armenian won the belt with a third-round defeat of former titleholder Ilunga Makabu on November 4 in his adopted hometown of Miami.

He remains the only busy titleholder on King’s current promotional lineup.

Rozicki (20-1, 19 KO) will fight for the second title fight in his career, either in the USA or on his home field.

The 29-year-old from Ontario, Canada has won seven in a row since losing to Oscar Rivas in October 2021. Their fierce fight was the inaugural fight for the WBC bridgeweight title.

Rozicki was to fight outside Canada for the first time in his career. His team’s intention now is to keep the fight north of the border.

Follow @JakeNDaBox

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Daniela Dubois’ coach: “I wouldn’t tell Anthony Joshua to come back to him”

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For a coach, perhaps the only thing better than a fight going as expected is for that same fight to end in a tie than they expected or indeed hoped for.

That was the experience for Don Charles and Kieran Farrell that night when their fighter, Daniel Dubois, faced Anthony Joshua in front of around 90,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. It was a fight in which Dubois, despite holding the IBF heavyweight title, was not only forced into the ring first, but was previously treated by most as merely an underdog; reflection. According to the script, this was the man Joshua would stop within a few rounds before lining up to fight the winner of the December 21 rematch between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk.

However, it turned out that on September 21, Dubois was who Charles and Farrell claimed. In just 30 seconds, he stabilized Joshua with a powerful jab to the left and minutes later put the former heavyweight champion on the line. At the end of the fifth round, the fight was over.

“We did it relatively easier than we thought we would, I’ll be sincere with you,” Farrell, who retired to his hotel room after the fight to drink tea, eat chocolate cake and some ice cream, told BoxingScene. “But we were there every day and committed to it. We were at Don’s farm every day for 12 weeks and Daniel put a lot of work into it. You do something every day for such a long time and it may get monotonous, but Daniel doesn’t show any enthusiasm for training. That’s great. He likes it. They say a cheerful fighter is a hazardous fighter, and you saw proof of that in the match against Joshua.

Another similar boxing saying is that a hurt fighter is a hazardous fighter. This seemed to be confirmed in the fifth round of the fight. This was the round in which Joshua scored his first and only success, landing a right hand out of nowhere, and yet instead of deterring Dubois or turning the tide in the Watford fighter’s favor, all he had to do with that punch was focus on the fighter . even more focused. Suddenly Dubois, whose power was already worrying Joshua, simply stepped back and let Joshua get excited and have his moment. Then he found the shot that ended the fight – a right hand thrown compact, with considerable strength and conviction.

Looking back, it was another sign of Dubois’ composure and composure under fire – something evident in the first round when he walked up to Joshua and landed the first punch to his face. “The first thing we said to Daniel was, ‘Come out and give him something to let him know he’s in the ring with you’; that’s exactly what he did,” Farrell said. “He went out there and hit that jab, and that jab is like a f***ing back. It’s a powerful weapon.”

Of course, firing this weapon is often easier said than done. Against Joshua, Dubois had to first get into position to shoot without receiving anything in return. Earlier, and even before entering the ring, he had to control the nerves that all competitors experience while waiting for the first bell. This time too, there were more eyeballs on Dubois than ever – causing some players to buckle under the pressure. But not Dubois. Oversized and seemingly unfazed, he stood statuesque and wore a mask of complete indifference throughout the fight; empty in the best way.

“It was relaxing,” Farrell said. “It sounds elementary and it is. I don’t want to overcomplicate it. If you look at the body language of both guys in this fight, you can see the difference. “AJ” looked like he was stepping into the ring for the first time in front of 98,000 fans. Daniel was excited; it was loose. We constantly reminded him to keep it casual and never stand still. We wanted him to be moving and on his toes before he went out there, and then we wanted him to stay the same when AJ was doing his gigantic walk around the ring and the introductions were going on.

“We expected the ring walk to take about 20 minutes, but it ended up being quite compact and piercing. Then, once we entered the ring, AJ stood still. I wouldn’t say he looked scared, but he looked very nervous.

“When we caught him with his back hand above his head in the first round and he went down, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s mental.’ Everyone thought Daniel was going to be grabbed by his back hand, but it turned out that Joshua was grabbed by it. It was a really nice moment. We couldn’t have started better. Now we just had to maintain the good streak and force the finish – and we did it. Daniel boxed perfectly.”

Now, after defeating Joshua, the little thing comes in the form of a rematch. For Joshua, it will be a chance for him to get revenge and prove that the first fight was just an aberration, while for Dubois it should give him a chance to play the role in this fight that he perhaps should have played the first time around. He will also approach a potential rematch as a man who not only believes he can beat Anthony Joshua, as he did before, but also as a man who actually can beat Anthony Joshua.

This is one of the reasons why Farrell suggests that a rematch with Dubois could be the biggest mistake Joshua could make at this stage of his career.

“If I were advising Joshua, I wouldn’t tell him to jump back into Daniel Dubois – a juvenile, hungry 27-year-old lion,” he said. “From what I see day after day, I know what he is capable of and now Joshua knows it too. If Daniel has hurt someone, he won’t see the final bell. He is a devastating boxer and I am only talking about facts. He’s like a modern-day Mike Tyson. But a bigger version.

“There are other fights for Joshua. He can do it [Deontay] Fight with Wilder. This would be a good fight between two huge names who now need a gigantic win. A win for either of them in this fight would give them a boost of confidence. They have been linked for a long time and both now have failures on their record. It would be wise to fight this fight.”

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Bivol may give up Beterbiev, says Chris Algieri

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Image: Bivol Could Drop Beterbiev, Says Chris Algieri

Chris Algieri believes that on October 12 we will see Artur Beterbiev knocked down by WBA airy heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol. Algieri believes Bivol (23-0, 12 KO) has the strength to defeat Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KO) at some point in the main event at the Kingdom Arena in Riyad.

It’s demanding to imagine Bivol abandoning IBF, WBC and WBO champion Beterbiev when he couldn’t knock down Lyndon Arthur, Gilberto Ramirez, Canelo Alvarez, Craig Richards or Joe Smith.

If Bivol couldn’t knock down these fighters, it doesn’t seem realistic to assume he can beat Beterbiev. Bivol won’t want to risk stopping in front of Beterbiev and getting clipped. Either way, this could have happened even if Bivol had used his normal hit-and-run style.

“Don’t be surprised if at some point in this fight Bivol catches Beterbiev, which should shock everyone because you’re watching a boxer take a punch to the mat,” Chris Algieri told Probox TVdiscussing the possibility of Dmitry Bivol knocking down Artur Beterbiev during their fight.

“We already saw Beterbiev downstairs. We saw Bivol score some really good knockdowns and knockouts. So it wouldn’t be strange if such a situation occurred,” Algieri said.

The only real knockout Beterbiev suffered was against Callum Johnson in 2018, but it wasn’t that bad. He got up and knocked out Johnson in the next round. Early in his career, Beterbiev was knocked down by Jeff Page Jr. after being quickly knocked down.

“Beterbiev is a very good boxer with very deep amateur experience and his skills have started to emerge recently as he has gotten older. I’m not sure if it’s because he’s not as wild as he used to be. When he comes into the team, he has to be smarter and more dishonest,” Algieri said.

Beterbiev has been fighting harder punches lately than at the start of his career and has had to be more vigilant defensively. If Beterbiev had fought the likes of Callum Smith and Anthony Yarde earlier in his career, he would have been more cautious about attacking them.

“We can see him using his jab, closing the distance and positioning himself much better. Bivol is certainly not a puncher, but he can hit demanding enough to command respect. Even in the Canelo fight, he was able to disarm the offensive machine in Canelo with his power, striking ability and combination punches with the stiffness of his shots. It’s a very complicated and nuanced fight,” Algieri said.

Canelo Alvarez was more concerned about the quick three-punch combinations that Bivol was throwing during their 2022 fight, but he didn’t have enough strength or power to pay for it. If Bivol was the same height as Canelo, he couldn’t have fought like that without getting knocked out because he was exposing himself against him because he was a much bigger guy.

“You’re talking about Bivol’s punching power. We saw some acute right hands. They surprise with their speed. They’re dishonest and all of a sudden you see him land a right hand and the guys get hurt,” Paulie Malignaggi said.

Bivol does have good right hand strength, but he is not at the level of some of Beterbiev’s recent opponents. These former Beterbiev knockout victims have more power than Bivol:

-Anthony Yarde
– Callum Smith
– Radivoje Kalajdzic
–Joe Smith Jr.
– Oleksandr Gvozdyk
– Callum Johnson

Bivol could be a better hitter if he wasn’t so focused on his in-and-out style. He’s always thinking about his exit strategy and doesn’t want to sit around putting weight on his shots like power hitters do. Perhaps one reason is that Bivol has been injured in the past and doesn’t want to risk being marked heavily.

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