McEwan targets Vegas showcase

Published on Sunday 29 November 2009 21:48

CRAIG McEwan stretched his perfect professional record to 17-0 and targeted a showcase date in Las Vegas early next year.

The Scottish middleweight scored a unanimous decision victory over American James Parrison in Quebec City, Canada, on Saturday night and the Los Angeles-based southpaw from Edinburgh has all the right connections to make a move up the 160lb rankings in 2010.

Trained and co-managed by renowned cornerman Freddie Roach and promoted by Oscar de la Hoya's Golden Boy Promotions, McEwan, 27, is hoping to be given a slot on the undercard of the welterweight world title clash between Shane Mosley and Andre Berto at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in the new year.

"Nothing has been set yet but on 30 January I'm hoping to get on the Mosley-Berto card," McEwan said. "It's a Golden Boy show so we're seeing if that comes off.

"We just have to sit down and plan but I'm staying in LA over Christmas and after taking the next couple of weeks off I'll go back training."

Beating a previously undefeated fighter in Parrison, now 12-1 (3 KOs), will improve McEwan's ranking and raise his profile in a middleweight division led by WBC/WBO champion Kelly Pavlik and crowded with British and Irish talent such as Matthew Macklin, Andy Lee and Darren Barker.

"I'm happy at 160, but it's a tough division. There are a lot of big names in there that make it interesting but I'm confident I can hang with anyone. It's up to Golden Boy and Freddie to say who I fight next. But I'm open to fighting anybody in America."

Whoever he fights, McEwan said he was enjoying life at Roach's Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, training alongside Amir Khan and Manny Pacquiao.

On the same card, Lucian Bute won his rematch with Librado Andrade and credited Lennox Lewis for showing him the way to victory. Canada-based Romanian Bute (25-0, 20 KOs) knocked his Mexican opponent out in the fourth round of his IBF super-middleweight title defence in Quebec City, his second victory over Andrade in 13 months.

The first fight had ended in controversy as Bute, 29, survived a long count after a 12th-round knockdown to win a unanimous decision in his adopted hometown of Montreal but Andrade had no grounds for complaint this time as he was dropped twice in the fourth.

The victory echoed that of Lewis over Hasim Rahman in 2001, the British heavyweight having lost his world titles in a shock stoppage in South Africa seven months earlier only to come back and gain revenge over the American with a fourth-round knockout in Las Vegas.

"That's the surprise we worked on," French-speaking Bute said through an interpreter. "Lennox Lewis did it against Rahman, we could do the same thing and we did what we had to do."