Once-beaten cruiserweight Floyd Masson (14-1, 8 KOs) will face the most experienced opponent of his career when he travels to Wroclaw, Poland on November 16 to fight former world title challenger Mateusz Masternak (48-6, 32 KOs) .
The fight seemingly materialized out of nowhere, with Australian Kiwi southpaw Masson learning about the fight just over a month after the proposed bout.
He seized the opportunity.
“We were trying to get a fight and the way things looked, it was going to be a fight overseas,” the 32-year-old Masson explained to The Ring, who will have his first professional bout outside his adopted country. “So my promoters, Angelo Di Carlo and Glenn Hosking, from Ace Boxing put the feelers out and we got a few offers, including from people over in America, but the dates didn’t work out.
“Then we got this offer with Masternak, which was a fight I’d rather take anyway because he’s in the top 10 (with the IBF). It was just a huge opportunity and when they offered us the fight I spoke to my trainer Blair Studley and he was keen on it so we took it pretty much straight away.”
Masson, who was born in the regional town of Te Awamutu on New Zealand’s North Island but boxes from the Queensland capital of Brisbane, is still in a rebuilding phase of his career after being knocked out by tough Belgian Yves Ngabu in the sixth round of their slugfest at the Eatons Hill Hotel in September last year.
Since then he has appointed Studley, from the Nitro Boxing Club in Chermside, as his new trainer. In their first outing together in August, Masson resisted his natural urge to fight and methodically broke down, stopping fellow Kiwi Joshua ‘Chucky’ Francis in four.
“It was good to get back there, get the win and put that loss behind me,” Masson said. “Once you lose, you just want to come back and win again. And of course I also had to wait a while with injury and stuff like that, but it was really good.”
Everything went according to plan for Masson in the Francis fight. He was quick, sharp and accurate, showed responsible defense in close, and took his forward count with hard counters to the body and head.
“I definitely felt calm and relaxed in there, which was good,” Masson said. “It was my first fight with my new trainer, which was the first time in a long time that I felt like I had someone in there who had my back. I was able to go back to the corner and really listen to Blair’s instructions and try to implement them in the fight, which makes a huge difference. We gelled very well.”
As good as Masson looked under Studley’s guidance in their maiden voyage, the real litmus test will come against Masternak. The seasoned veteran, now 37 years old, proved as recently as last year that he can still mix it with the best when he defeated The Ring’s No.1 contender, Chris Billam-Smith, for his WBO belt challenged.
Masternak was more than competitive. He controlled the court well and his right hand was a key weapon, but it was the body attack of Billam-Smith that eventually wore him down. When he failed to answer the bell to start the eighth, Masternak was ahead five rounds to two on two of the judges’ scorecards and even on the third.
Masson studied his opponent and said he knew what to expect from Masternak, who will face his first left-handed opponent in a dozen years.
“Looking at his previous fights, he’s obviously very experienced and he seems to be adapting very well as the fight goes on. And of course that comes with experience. In the CBS fight he looked very sharp and he has a good right hand and he landed that right hand a lot,” he said.
“Obviously he’s getting to be an older fighter and he’s had a lot of fights in his career. I think the most important thing for me is that I just have to back myself up and fight a smart game plan. I know I can beat him. It’s a last resort thing for me to turn it into a bar fight – and I’m sure he’s been in a lot of those types of fights – but it’ll be interesting to see how much he has left in the tank.
“He is definitely a winning fighter and we believe we can defeat him. We just have to box smart and I just have to do what I do best to get the win.”
