Green arrives in Montreal!

December 17, 2003

By Dave Spencer

Things were somewhat more white than green as super middleweight Danny Green and his ‘Green Machine’ touched down Monday night into Montreal and got a taste of a Canadian winter that had dumped more than a foot of snow on the city during the day. Despite the inclement weather, Green and trainer Jeff Fenech were in good spirits as they prepared to put the finishing touches to a training camp that sees the Australian do battle with local hero Eric Lucas this Saturday at the city’s Bell Centre. Green addressing the media said he was thankful for the opportunity and to having to a chance to providing the fans with a show. This is the second time in as many fights the Perth native who now fights out of Sydney has ventured into his opponent’s backyard to do battle.

“No worries at all mate,” said a confident Green about coming to Montreal.

“Danny’s not to worried,” said Green’s trainer Fenech who fielded most of the questions in the scrum, “But I’m pretty worried about the state of refereeing and judging in boxing throughout the whole world at the moment. It’s terrible at the moment, it’s scary because these fighters train so hard and the best fighter of the day should win. It shouldn’t be because you fight in Canada or you fight in Australia, it should be the best fighter who wins. We’re just hoping for an even shake because if it does go the distance we’d like to think that if Danny is good enough to win that he gets the decision.”

Green who had a perfect 16 knockouts in 16 victories in his short two year career ventured into enemy territory in August of this year when he battled Markus Beyer on the WBC Champion’s home turf. A relative unknown at the time outside his native land, Green quickly served notice that he was a force to be reckoned within the division. He served notice in the first round with a knockdown. The second notice was served by means of a right-hand shortly thereafter in the next round. Come the fifth round though Green delivered a blow by means of a headbutt that hurt him a lot more than it hurt his opponent. Originally scored as a two-point deduction, 11 minutes of debate later it was ruled that the butt had worsened the cut on Beyer’s face to the point where the champion could no longer continue, thus disqualifying Green.

“It’s the first time in the history of boxing that somebody’s been disqualified 11 minutes after the fight,” said Fenech referring to the incident. “When the head doesn’t touch a cut that’s been there since the second round, you know something funny has happened. Again on the weekend with Sven Ottke wins again on another close decision. It doesn’t seem to be a safe place you can go in Germany unless you can knock the guy out.”

Fenech doesn’t buy into double-edged sword theory that while his fighter’s aggressiveness built him a huge lead against Beyer, it is also what ultimately cost him the fight. “As far as I’m concerned, Danny might of used his head, it wasn’t intentional but it was illegal, and you don’t get disqualified for that. That was just sheer cheating and incompetence.”

Fans can look for Green to come out in the same aggressive manner that has yet resulted in any of his fights going the distance. “We train the same for every fight,” said Fenech, “We don’t go looking for the knockout, the knockout just comes. Hopefully he’ll do the same here. We’re always aggressive, that’s the way we fight. The crowd is going to get a good fight, but we’re here to win, we wouldn’t have come if we didn’t think we could win.”