On January 18, 2022, Beijing time, Lee Wood, who defeated Chinese boxing champion Xu Can in the form of TKO last year to win the title of WBA featherweight world regular boxer, finally announced his plans for his first world champion defense.
In an interview with Sky Sports TV, Lee Wood announced that he will hold his first world champion defense battle after becoming the WBA featherweight world regular boxer at the Nottingham Motorsports Arena on Saturday 12 March 2022 local time in the UK, and his opponent will be Michael Conlan from Ireland.
Leigh Wood also revealed to reporters that the online streaming platform DAZN will broadcast his matches live worldwide (except in New Zealand and Australia).
At the end of July last year, in the "Fighting Camp" series of events held in Brentwood, Essex, where the athletic boxing promotion company is headquartered, Lee Wood, who was still unknown at the time, defeated the then world champion Xu Can in the twelfth round of his first World Boxing Championship, becoming the second world boxing champion in Nottingham after the former IBF super middleweight world champion Carl Franche.
But immediately after the game, Lee Wood returned to his usual low-key lifestyle. It has not appeared in the headlines of the boxing media for a long time. Fortunately, after entering 2022, Leigh Wood did not choose to continue to keep a low profile.
In the interview, Leigh Wood personally showed great confidence. He told reporters: "As an opponent, I admit that Michael Conlan is a good boxer, but I am much better than him. Especially when the game is deadlocked, I will not back down, but always maintain the determination to win. Believe me, I have more experience in the face of adversity, and I have taken a difficult journey to achieve today's achievements. I still have a lot of courage and tenacity, because I don't want to fall back to square one just after reaching the highest point. I am very confident of winning in the race in March. ”
However, Leigh Wood's opponent this time, Michael Conland, is not an ordinary mediocre, he has been hailed as the best boxer in Ireland's amateur boxing industry, and has represented the Irish boxing national team in various international competitions, including the Olympic Games and the World Boxing Championships. Since the end of the Rio 2016 Olympics, Michael Conlan has moved on to professional boxing and has remained unbeaten (16-16 wins). During this time, Michael Conlan won a number of WBA and WBO Intercontinental Boxing Titles.
On August 6 last year (2021), Michael Conlan defeated TJ Downey by unanimous in a match at Belfast Falls Park to win the vacant WBA featherweight world transition champion gold belt. However, Michael Conland was a bit ill-timed, just in time for the WBA to clean up its World Champion title in 2021, so Michael Conland's transitional World Champion Gold Belt was quickly stripped away.
But Michael Conlan did not have the regret and sadness of the transition, because he believed that he could immediately take a world champion gold belt, this time a regular boxing king gold belt.
Michael Conland said in an interview with reporters: "Leigh Wood's confidence in himself has exceeded the scope of his strength, which will bring him failure. I don't need to say much because I'll explain everything with my fists in the ring. It will be the most important race of my career, but I'm sure I'll still win it easily. If it's a tense chess game, then I'll be the one who will say the general last. In 2022, I will become the world champion of boxing as I wish. ”
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