Tuesday, May 11, 2021
“Something is burning in me”
The curious comeback of the waiting boxer
Mahmoud Charr returns to the ring after three and a half years. He is no longer world champion, but waiting world champion. The circumstances surrounding the loss of his belt are strange – and the comeback cannot take place in an orderly fashion either.
Mahmoud Charr dreamed of glamorous evenings of fighting against the Joshuas or Furys of this world, but the harsh reality was another. In the Baaden sports studio in Cologne, the “world champion on hold” will return to the ring on Saturday (10:10 pm) three and a half years after his much-acclaimed World Cup triumph. There are eventful times behind Charr, a renewed promotion to boxing Olympus seems questionable.
His goal, according to the 36-year-old yesterday, Monday, be “to get the big fight against Anthony Joshua or Tyson Fury”. At the moment, the two heavyweight kings are miles away for Charr, who once called himself “Manuel”. His opponent at the comeback weekend is Christopher Lovejoy (USA), 37 years old and undefeated in all 19 professional fights. The fact that Charr is boxing again at all can be seen as a success.
Only recently had Charr, long regular world champion of the WBA association, lost his belt at the green table. At the moment the man from Cologne is listed as a “Champion in Recess” (world champion waiting). The title had been stripped from him after he could not defend it against Trevor Bryan (USA), protégé of the promoter legend Don King, in the States at the beginning of the year. Charr and his promoter Erol Ceylan blamed King for this. This prevented Charr from getting the necessary visa.
“It didn’t come about because Don King didn’t sign the P1 visa. He didn’t sign the combat contract,” says Charr: “Erol said: This is the harassment of Don King. He will fight you never lead because he knew his boxer would lose to me. ” In the years before, Charr had never defended his title for the first time for various reasons, including a positive doping test and the corona pandemic.
His upcoming opponent Lovejoy is also one of King’s protégés, and Charr and Ceylan have indicated that King is trying to prevent this fight as well. Before that, Charr last stood in the ring on November 25, 2017, when he won the WBA title against Russian Alexander Ustinov. This was followed by a media farce about a German passport, which Charr later admitted not to have. Now he wants to attack again: “I might have stopped, but I’m not finished yet,” he said: “Something is burning in me.”
.