FOX SPORTS, Australia
Townsville Bulletin, Australia
Advertiser Adelaide, Australia
March 23 2005

Fenech foe plots Vic’s fall
By Grantlee Kieza

HE once broke the heart of Jeff Fenech – and this Sunday Harold
Volbrecht wants to crush the apple of his eye.

Volbrecht, South African welterweight champion for a staggering 14
years, was the architect of Fenech’s worst defeat. And now he’s back
in Australia confident his flyweight Mzukisi Sikali will take the IBF
world flyweight title from Fenech’s pride and joy, Vic Darchinyan.

It’s the first title defence for the Fenech-trained Darchinyan, and
the Armenian-born world champ has picked a fight with a slick-moving
veteran who is unbeaten over his last six years, and supremely
confident of springing an upset at the State Sports Centre.

Volbrecht was one of the world’s top welterweights for a decade and
has trained some of South Africa’s greatest fighters of the last 20
years.

These range from Corrie Sanders, the giant policeman and rugby
five-eighth who held a version of the world heavyweight championship,
to the sublimely gifted Brian Mitchell and the flamboyant Lovemore
Ndou.

He also trained Phillip Holiday, the world lightweight champ who
ended Fenech’s career with a devastating second-round knockout back
in 1996 in Melbourne.

And Volbrecht says Sikali is the best fighter of the lot.

“He is a far more talented boxer than Darchinyan,” Volbrecht said.

“In terms of style he fights a lot like Sugar Ray Leonard, but from a
southpaw stance.

“Sikali is a beautiful mover and I have always said that a skilful,
thinking fast boxer will always beat the strong, hard-punching
aggressive types like Darchinyan.

“I have trained a lot of fighters over the years and we have come a
long way for this fight. I don’t often travel with losers and I will
be very surprised if Vic Darchinyan is still the world champion on
Monday.”

Volbrecht has been able to back up his confidence in the past.

He says he planned for the deeply-religious Holiday to nail Fenech
with overhand rights from the fourth round of their world-title bout
in 1996. Instead Holiday unleashed a barrage of punches in the
opening seconds with the fury of a biblical plague.

“We had a TV monitor in our room and we could see Fenech in his
dressing room just sitting there and not warming up properly,”
Volbrecht said.

“I knew then we could catch Fenech cold and I told Phillip to throw
the right hands we were planning for round four.

“Phillip was a very good fighter but he was helped a lot in that bout
by catching Fenech cold.”

Volbrecht says Sikali’s lack of a proper warm-up was responsible for
his worst defeat, a 48-second loss to WBC flyweight champ Pongsaklek
Wongjongkam in Thailand eight years ago.

Since then he has lost just once, and that was by a split decision in
a world super-flyweight title fight in Italy six years ago.

Darchinyan, 29, also fights as a southpaw. He won the world title in
an epic battle against the Colombian fighter Irene Pacheco in
Hollywood, Florida in December.

KOSTYA Tszyu’s protege, Anton Solopov, and Newcastle’s most popular
fighter, Chad Bennett, will both be in action tomorrow night at
Newcastle Panthers.

Solopov, who is a former world junior amateur champion and the first
fighter to be managed by Tszyu, will be looking for his 10th
professional victory when he faces Argentina’s Raul Eduardo Bejarano,
the South American welterweight champion.

Bennett, who is the current IBF Pan Pacific welterweight champ, will
face another South American fighter, Oscar Samudio from Paraguay.