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By Mike C Ryan

 

Kali crossing the Ocean again

Kalivath Meehan, studio portrait

Kali Meehan has WBO Champ Lamon Brewster going in Vegas

Sportsmen together, despite shaky decision to Brewster

 

“He’ll win the World Heavyweight Title this year!” A bold forecast from a careful man, Mark Janssen.

Mark and his protege, Kali Meehan are bound for the USA again . “”Kali is fitter than ever in his life,” Janssen told us. “Not only physical condition, his mental attitude is right.”

You recall it was two Decembers ago when Meehan got stopped by Hasim Rahman at Madison Square Garden in New York. still on his feet after four rounds

“He hit me with two hundred lucky punches,” jested the loser, who’d refused to go down.

Kali went into that bout with a neck injury and low morale -- a shadow of the man who two months before in Las Vegas, ran Lamon Brewster to a split decision for the World Boxing Organisation championship over 12 rounds.

Well now he’s going back to the States to surpass the past. Ray the Rainman Austin has called in Kali Meehan the craftsman to help him prepare for his IBF Heavyweight Title fight with Wladimir Klitschkov, March 10 in Mannheim, Germany.

Meehan is expected to feature on the German bill, as he did on Lamon Brewster’s title defence at Hamburg in September, 2005.

This Friday Kali takes off for Florida seated in an airliner beside trainer Mark Janssen, long known as Magic Mark for his undefeated championship career, and his boxing lore.

Both are devoted family men, with three children each. But the Aussie pair will stay abroad for “as long as it takes” to win a crown.

Said Janssen: “Kali’s fitter than ever in his life. That’s already so, with six weeks still before he fights. He’s running eight kilometers, and doing the Reg Layton endurance program, twelve rounds heavy bag, weights. He already shed 3 kg.”

Last outing on November 17 Meehan put away the South African heavyweight, Anton Nel, in round three at Gold Coast. One dipping right, like the cluster that had Lamon Brewster nearly out in the eighth round at Mandalay Bay, sent Nel to sleep.

Kali and Mark are completing their Australian leg at Dean Singleton’s gym in Gosford, NSW. Kali does rounds with the fighting footballers, Hopoate and Thompson. "They're strong, they work me hard," he says tactfully.

From next week the daily toil will be at a Don King training camp in Florida

Never a boaster, Mark Janssen had this final word: “I swear Kali will win the title. He’ll bash ‘em all!”