Denis Lebedev
Denis Alexandrovich Lebedev (Russian Денис Александрович Лебедев; born August 14, 1979 in Stary Oskol ) is a Russian professional boxer and world champion of the WBA cruiserweight.
Amateur career
Lebedev punched in the Russian national team and was founded in 1997 in Birmingham Junior European champion at middleweight. He won it against Michele Aramini from Italy, Gabrid Orudschiew from Azerbaijan and Hasan Kılıç from Turkey each prematurely and in the final on points against György Hidvégi from Hungary.
In 1998, he won a bronze medal in the light heavyweight division at the Goodwill Games in New York City. With a victory against the Polish Olympic boxer Tomasz Borowski, he was drafted into the semifinals, where he, however, the U.S. champion Olanda Anderson defeated on points.
Professional career
As of February 2001, he boxed as a professional and was twice Champion of Russia in the light heavyweight division. After a premature victory against Cuban Eliseo Castillo ( 20:2 ), former opponents of Vladimir Klitschko and later North American champion of the WBO, he won in July 2009 with a TKO victory in the third round against former WBO champion Enzo Maccarinelli ( 29:3 ), the Intercontinental Champion title WBO cruiserweight.
He defended the title against Ali Ismailov then each prematurely ( 16:2 ) and Ignacio Esparza ( 16:1 ) and stood in Schwerin a World Cup Titeleleminierung the WBO, he in July 2010 by co won in the second round against Alexander Alexeyev (19:1). He was allowed to begin on December 18, 2010 in Berlin against WBO titlist Marco Huck (30:1 ), but this encounter lost remains controversial points ( split decision ). Huck suffered already in the fourth round a rib fracture and could only with aggressive attacks to score against the technically more superior Russians. Two of the judges saw Huck with 115:113 front, while the third judge evaluated the fight 116:112 for Lebedev.
But already on 21 May 2011 he defeated in Moscow the American Roy Jones Jr. ( 54:7 ), the former pound for pound best boxer in the world by Ko in the tenth round. By a unanimous points victory in November against James Toney ( 73:6 ), he was interim WBA cruiserweight champion. In April 2012, he won by whacked in the second round against Shawn Cox ( 16:1 ) from Barbados.
In October 2012, the WBA decided after a three-day convention to appoint interim world champion Denis Lebedev for new regular WBA champion. The reason given was that the current world champion Guillermo Jones has canceled his voluntary defense against ranked Fifteenth Andres Taylor for an alleged violation. Jones, who was world champion in 2008, was considered to be extremely unreliable and had since then defended his title only twice.
On December 17, 2012 Lebedev defended the championship belt against Colombian Santander Silgado ( 23:0 ) by Ko in the fourth round.
In his second title defense on May 17, 2013 Moscow, he finally met still on Guillermo Jones and subject to that by co in the eleventh round. On October 18, 2013 WBA announced that traces of doping substances have been found in Jones ' blood samples. Jones ' victory was canceled and the champion title went back to Lebedev.