Lerena ready to ‘climb a mountain’ as he makes heavyweight debut

Former IBO cruiserweight world champion Kevin “Two Guns” Lerena will finally step on to the tough heavyweight ladder for the first time at Emperors Palace on Saturday night.

After being out of action for the past 15 months due to a hand injury and Covid restrictions, the popular 29-year-old southpaw headlines the Golden Gloves “Heavyweight Mania” box-and-dine card, facing the 35-year-old Romanian Bogdan Dinu for the vacant WBA Intercontinental heavyweight title.

Having last stepped between the ropes in what was pretty much a keep-busy fight against American Kevin Ferguson in December 2020, Lerena says the prolonged layoff has just made him “even hungrier”.

The South African (26-1-13), however, will answer the opening bell on Saturday giving away a significant height, weight and reach advantage to the gangly Dinu (20-3-16 ko’s), who stands at 1.98 metres and has a high career knockout ratio, suggesting he packs a potent punch.

True to his confident demeanour, there was typical fighting talk from Lerena this week, in the build-up to the contest.

“I’m not fazed having to fight bigger, stronger men. The mountain is high and I’m prepared to climb it,” Lerena said.

“You can’t, however, compare apples and pears. Heavyweight is very different. The punches come from different angles and one has to learn to neutralise power with speed and ring IQ.”

There are few, if any, reasons to question his technical ability and solid skillset but one thing making the home fighter a lot more relaxed is that he hasn’t had to face a battle with the scales.

“It would be doing me an injustice trying to stay down at cruiserweight. At one stage I was pulling up to 14 kilograms just to make the cruiserweight limit. Now the weight I wake up at is the weight I am going to fight at,” Lerena said.

The heavyweight division is the pinnacle in terms of monetary offers in the sport and Lerena makes no secret of the fact this fight is his first “roll of the dice” towards bigger things, and crashing into the prestigious WBA and IBF top 10 ratings is very much on his radar.

But for now, he can’t really look much beyond the task at hand on Saturday night.

In the main supporting bout, Juan “Rhino” Roux (6-0) puts his SA heavyweight title on the line against Joshua Pretorius (7-4-0) with the vacant African Boxing Union title belt also thrown into the mix.

Dual titles will also be up for grabs when Shervantaigh Koopman (9-0) defends his national middleweight and IBF Africa middleweight titles against Jami Webb (6-1-0).