WBA/IBF/WBO lightweight champion Nate Campbell says beating Juan Guzman live on Setanta Sports on Saturday night will be the first step to him clearing the deepest division in world boxing.
Click here for details on how to watch this fight, along with Joe Calzaghe’s super-fight with Roy Jones Jr, David Haye’s November 15 heavyweight bout and many more.
Campbell (32-5-1, 25 KOs) won the titles in a huge upset when he outpointed Juan Diaz in March and immediately set his sights on being only the second man ever to hold all four major belts at the same time after Bernard Hopkins.
With Manny Pacquiao choosing to meet Oscar De La Hoya, Campbell will have to wait for his opportunity, but has not lost sight of this goal.
“I want to have all four belts in this division,” Campbell said. “Right now, I’m focused on beating Guzman this weekend.
“Thanks to De La Hoya, that fight between myself and Manny might not happen. They made that fight out of money, not for the fans. I fight for the fans.”
Campbell goes into the fight against the unbeaten former WBO super bantamweight/super featherweight champion as an underdog and there is a great deal of bad feeling heading into the bout after Guzman repeatedly trash-talked him.
The 36-year-old insists this along with the hard road he was forced to travel to get to the top will stand him in good stead in Biloxi on Saturday night.
“After all the things that Guzman and his people have said, somebody is going to have to pay for that and I guess it’s going to have to be Guzman,” Campbell said. “I’m going to give him something to shut his mouth on Saturday here in Biloxi.
“I came up the hard way. I’m one of the few fighters you can truly say that. All these other guys came up with easy opposition. They became champions the easy way. I came up with losses, heartbreak, heartache.
“I had to deal with it. You don’t have to give me my respect. I’ll take it the hard way. I’m not angry with anybody. I just want what I believe I deserve.”
