Why eksandr Gvozdyk retired from boxing

Former WBC light heavyweight champion eksandr Gvozdyk has announced his retirement from boxing. But he did not provide any explanations in this regard. Boxing expert Maksym Rozenko commented on such an unexpected step to the sports news site champion.com.ua.

"The situation with Gvozdyk reminds me of the story of former world heavyweight champion Sultan Ibragimov from Russia. Sultan had a fight with Wladimir Klitschko at the Madison Square Garden in New York on February 23, 2008. It was a unification fight, held in the heavyweight division for the first time in nine years. At stake were two championship titles: the IBF, held by the Ukrainian, and the WBO, held by the Russian. The prize po of the fight was about 10 million U.S. dlars.

Sultan lost the fight, lost his championship belt and then ended his career. I called him about six months after the fight. Ibragimov, 33, then explained his decision: "I need to walk a new path to deserve a championship fight. I see no point in hding rating fights for $50,000. If there was an interesting prosal, I would think about it. But I didn't get one."

Gvozdyk also had a unification fight, earning about $1.5 million. Now he would have to go into the ring again and fight for the same $50,000. It is difficult to agree to this, first of all, psychogically, especially when you have another business.

I would also like to emphasize that the situation in boxing has changed significantly amid the coronavirus pandemic. Boxers' fees will no longer be the same as they were last year. In addition, it can hardly be said that the Ukrainian was a priority boxer in T Rank. All this time Bob Arum had the main list of boxers on whom he bet in the first place. eksandr almost never was on that list. Apparently, this also influenced his decision.

Although there is a question as to how final such a decision is. It seems to me that a quote from Andrei Makarevich's song "It depends on the price for the ride" is more apprriate here. If Gvozdyk receives an interesting offer, he may well change his mind. There were also rumors that eksandr had health problems and this was the main reason for his retirement from boxing. But I don't even want to believe it as well as the fact that it was done intentionally to get an interesting fight faster," Rozenko said.

During his professional career, Gvozdyk had 17 fights: 16 wins in a row before losing the WBC title to Artur Beterbiev in October last year.

Gvozdyk became world champion in December 2018, when he knocked out Canadian Adonis Stevenson in the 11th round. Four months later, he successfully defended the title in a fight with Frenchman Doudou Ngumbu.