FIRAT ARSLAN vs GUILLERMO JONES

The physical strength and tank-like aggression of Germany’s Firat Arslan has worked very well for him and he has been one of the surprising success stories of European boxing in recent years.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Arslan looked a strong but ordinary cruiserweight. He was well beaten by German rival Rudiger May and he was losing to Mark Hobson when the tall British fighter was unluckily halted due to a cut over the eye in the seventh round.

Arslan dug in, though, persevered, and started to outwork and outlast his opponents, finishing strongly in a gruelling draw with Vadim Tokarev, when the Russian fighter looked weary and glad to hear the final bell.

This was the fight that showed Arslan could be a threat at world level. Although he lost a decision in the Czech Republic in December 2003, Arslan has been on a roll since then, with 11 wins in a row and he has been fighting better than ever, with impressive victories in his last four fights, the last three for the WBA title.

On Saturday, the 37-year-old Arslan defends his title on the huge Hamburg show when he meets Panama’s Guillermo Jones, a Don King-promoted fighter who hasn’t boxed much lately but who is respected in the industry as an excellent professional who knows his craft.

“This guy is the consummate professional,” Buffalo, NY agent Rick Glaser, who knows Jones better than most, said in a phone conversation this week. “He loves to train, he loves to fight and he loves being around boxing. He lives at Don King’s training camp [in Orwell, OH]. When he isn’t training he’s working in the corner with fighters and training them. When he isn’t fighting any more he will make a great trainer and he’ll be an asset to the sport.”

Jones, 36, is in the unfortunate position of being a good fighter who is not an attraction. He has fought on Don King undercards but has had little exposure on TV. A fighter such as Jones needs a championship in order to make real money. The fight with Arslan is his big — perhaps last — chance.

Some feel that Jones should have been a world champion long before now. As a long and lanky light-middleweight he had two very close title fights with the competent Laurent Boudouani in 1998, a draw and disputed split decision loss.

He found draining his 6ft 4ins frame down to 154 pounds was getting too much and a bigger, bulkier Jones fought a draw with the slippery, unorthodox Johnny Nelson for the WBO cruiser title in England in 2002. Many considered Jones unfortunate. The Associated Press described it as “a verdict that amazed even the home fans”. Jones was the aggressor and seemed to land the harder punches. “The decision was absolutely diabolical,” commented Glenn McCrory, himself a former cruiserweight champion and now a TV commentator in the UK.

In the six years since that fight, Jones has fought only seven times. The hard-luck story continued when he lost a split decision to the skilful Steve Cunningham in a fight that many believed could have gone the other way. Now Cunningham is a champion, also in the Don King fold, and Jones has remained a contender.

It has been a story of so near, yet so far, for Jones in his biggest fights. The two fights with Boudouani and the ones with Nelson and Cunningham were all contests that he almost won and maybe should have won. Perhaps his fortunes will change for the better on Saturday.

He faces, of course, a very tough task, going up against a popular German fighter in Germany. Jones has Don King’s support, though, and he can be encouraged by the fact that Panamanian Anselmo Moreno won a unanimous decision over German-promoted Wladimir Sidorenko in a bantamweight title bout in Germany earlier this year, a fight that actually seemed closer than indicated by the clear scores in favour of the visitor.

Arslan soundly defeated the muscled Darnell Wilson in his last fight and before this he easily outpointed Virgil Hill. Wilson, though, fought in spurts while the 42-year-old Hill lacked the punching power and the physical strength to hold off Arslan.

Jones has the height and reach advantages. He can box and he can punch — and he is usually a busy fighter. The physical strength and constant pressure of Arslan will always give his opponents problems. He marches in, gloves up, and goes to work with combinations and body punches from his southpaw stance, seeking to wear down the other man. He could simply grind down Jones on Saturday, but the Panamanian has developed into a big, strong 200-pound cruiserweight. He might hit hard enough to slow down Arslan a bit.

It is a concern that Jones has boxed just twice in three years. His last big fight was the somewhat bizarre win over ex-champ Wayne Braithwaite on Showtime in September 2005 when he won with a barrage of right-handers in the fourth round, then collapsed in pain — it seems that he had suffered cramps in his right foot as early as the second round and was barely able to keep going. That was a war, with Braithwaite almost stopped in the opening round, rallying, then getting caught again. Jones slipped into comparative obscurity, but it does seem that he has stayed in the gym.

I am expecting Jones to do well in the early rounds with his long-armed, busy punching style, whipping punches around the sides of Arslan’s guard and going to the body. The big question is whether he can keep it up and put enough rounds in the bank to win a decision against a fighter who looks almost impossible to knock out.

Arslan is the favourite, a champion who is boxing at home and has been far more active than his opponent, but Jones is the more skilled fighter and seems to be the harder hitter. If Jones’s stamina doesn’t give out, he can win a hard-fought decision, and one must assume that he will enter the ring in tiptop condition. I lean very slightly towards Jones, in a now-or-never situation, scoring enough points to go into an early lead and then gritting his way through the torrid later rounds to eke out a narrow, upset decision victory.