Skelton can tame the Turk by James Slater Apr 2nd 2008

Once again, British heavyweight Matt Skelton will soon be packing his bags for an upcoming big fight. The opportunity to box Turkish tough guy Sinan Samil Sam for the vacant European heavyweight belt carries with it the stipulation that the 41-year-old from the UK travels to Sam's home country. Not that the 21-2 (18) Skelton will be at all fazed by this. In his last fight, a competitive, yet losing affair against WBA champion Ruslan Chagaev, Skelton was happy to travel to Germany - as he has done in the past. Now, on May 30th, big Matt will buy himself a plane ticket to Istanbul. Will it be a successful trip abroad this time though? Sam, 30-4 (16), is the younger man at age 33, and he has home advantage, of course. Also, Sam has boxed the higher level of opposition - his (losing) bouts with the likes of Oliver McCall, Oleg Maskaev, Juan Carlos Gomez and Luan Krasniqi, for example. But Skelton is an extremely hungry fighter and he trains hard. Sam is tough, but to many peoples' minds he simply carries too much weight these days. Will this fight come down to who wants it more? Very possibly, and if it does, barring an unfair points verdict in the local fighter's favour, I see only one winner - Matt Skelton. The 41-year-old surprised many in his losing effort against Chagaev. Matt pushed the unbeaten champion hard all night, was very much in the fight and even showed a number of decent boxing skills. Proving he is durable was nothing new to his fans, but Matt's overall underrated boxing ability may have been unforeseen. Basically, if he performs as well on May 30th as he did back in January, Skelton will prove to be too much for Sam - a fighter whose weight has constantly increased with each passing fight as of late (Sam was 240 pounds in the summer of 2006, and weighed over 257 pounds in his last fight). Sam has bounced back from his last defeat - on points to McCall in June of last year - winning three in a row. But Skelton, though he is coming off a loss, figures to pick up the most meaningful title of his career, with either a late stoppage victory (which would mark the first stoppage ever suffered by Sam) or a close points win on May 30th. Barring, of course, a bad decision that goes against him.

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