HBO shows interest in Dzinziruk-Collazo talks

Ryan Burton of BoxingScene.com reports today that there is a 154-pound title fight being discussed that would pit Sergiy Dzinziruk against Luis Collazo. Gary Shaw, promoting Dzinziruk, says that HBO is interested in a possible fall date between the two. Dzinziruk has never fought on HBO before.

Dzinziruk (37-0, 23 KO) signed with Shaw and came out of a long period inactivity with a dominant TKO-10 win over Daniel Dawson on May 14, which was televised on ShoBox. The 34-year-old hadn't fought since beating Joel Julio in November 2008 due to a dispute with former promoter Universum. The two sides split when Dzinziruk felt Universum blew negotiations to fight Paul Williams.

Collazo (30-4, 15 KO) hasn't fought since June 2009, when he added another easy win to his resume by beating David Gogichaishvili, who was 9-16 coming into the bout. It was five months after a very narrow defeat in a fantastic fight against Andre Berto.

Since 2006, Collazo has made a habit of losing a big fight, then picking off weak opponents. It started with his highly disputed loss to Ricky Hatton, and came again after he was beaten by Shane Mosley in 2007. He's 4-3 in his last seven, with four wins that say nothing about him and two losses that could've gone his way. Collazo has one of the strangest records you'll find, and it'd be easy to question him on paper. But when you watch him fight, you know he can.

A matchup with Dzinziruk could be very interesting. They're both southpaws, and while Collazo is the shorter man (5'9" to Sergiy's 6'0", at least as officially billed), he has a longer listed reach by four inches. Dzinziruk has pretty short arms for a junior middleweight. Both are good, tactical boxers, and Collazo has shown an ability to get in and fight rough when he has to, as well.

The biggest worry, really, is that Collazo also has a history of being difficult in negotiations. Being very talented, he feels he's worth more money than networks do. He has a very limited fanbase (which is being nice about it). In a way, he's similar to Winky Wright in that regard. One can only wonder if he'd have become at least a Wright-level star had he gotten the win over Ricky Hatton, similar to what happened for Winky when he finally got a major shot and beat Shane Mosley twice.