Zhang now a heavyweight star but his best days were wasted
Plus tons of random thoughts: Fury needs to defend title; so why did Benn have no power at 154?; Ryan ripped off; Shakur-Navarrete seeds planted; unmade fight that still irks me; MUCH MORE
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Chinese heavyweight Zhilei Zhang has become an overnight sensation at age 40. Too bad most of his career was wasted.
He was an Olympian in 2008 (silver medal) and 2012, didn’t turn pro until 2014 and then his former handlers matched him with nobodies for the first seven years of his career, which, given his recent performances, seems to have been entirely unnecessary.
I get that fighters need at least some seasoning when they arrive in the pros, but seven years for an elite amateur? That’s crazy. Zhang didn’t fight a legit opponent until 2021, which is a shame.
Whatever he does going forward after his two big back-to-back stoppage wins over Joe Joyce, including a sensational third-round knockout on Saturday in Joyce’s hometown of London to retain the WBO interim title, I’ll always wonder what could have been had his handlers not wasted his prime years putting him in meaningless fights nobody saw.
But whatever Zhang does next it should be something significant. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. He called out lineal/WBC champion Tyson Fury after Saturday’s fight, but that seems highly unlikely for many reasons — although they are both with promoter Frank Warren, who has two more options on Zhang.
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