Floyd Masson heads to Poland for a crossroads bout vs Mateusz Masternak on Nov. 16
Once-beaten cruiserweight Floyd Masson (14-1, 8 KOs) will face the most experienced opponent of his career when he travels to Wroclaw, Poland to fight former world title challenger Mateusz Masternak (48-6, 32 KOs) on November 16.
The fight seemingly materialized out of nowhere, with Australian-based Kiwi southpaw Masson learning about the bout little more than a month out from the proposed bout.
He jumped at the opportunity.
“We were trying to get a fight and the way things were looking, it was going to be a fight overseas,” the 32-year-old Masson explained to The Ring, who will be having his first professional bout outside of 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 would 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 pretty much took it straight away.”
Masson, who was born in the regional town of Te Awamutu on New Zealand’s North Island but boxes out of the Queensland capital of Brisbane, is still in a rebuilding phase of his career after being stopped by rugged Belgian Yves Ngabu in the sixth-round of their slugfest at the Eatons Hill Hotel in September last year.
Since then he has employed 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 brawl and methodically broke down and stopped fellow Kiwi Joshua ‘Chucky’ Francis in four.
“It was good to get back in there, get the win and put that loss behind me,” said Masson. “When you first lose, you just want to get back in there and win again. And obviously I had to wait for a while too with injury and stuff like that, but it was really good.”
Everything went to plan for Masson in the Francis fight. He was fast, sharp and accurate, showing responsible defense in close, picking off his forward-charging count with hard counters to the body and head.
“I definitely felt calm and relaxed in there, which was good,” said Masson. “It was my first fight with my new coach, which was the first time in a long time that I felt I had someone in there who had got my back. I could go back to the corner and really listen Blair’s instructions and try to implement them in the fight, which makes a huge difference. We have gelled really 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 challenged The Ring’s No. 1 contender, Chris Billam-Smith, for his WBO belt in Bournemouth, England last December.
Masternak was more than competitive. He controlled the range well and his right hand was a key weapon, but it was the body attack from Billam-Smith that ultimately wore him down. When he was unable to answer the bell to start the eighth, Masternak was leading five round to two on two of the judges’ scorecards and even on the third.
Masson has studied his opponent and say he knows what to expect from Masternak, who will be up against his first left-handed opponent in a dozen years.
“Watching his past fights, he’s obviously very experienced and it looks like he adjusts really well as the fight goes on. And obviously, this comes with experience. In the CBS fight, he looked really sharp and he has a good right hand and he was landing that right hand a lot,” he said.
“Obviously he’s getting to be an older fighter and he has had a lot of fights in his career. I think the main thing for me is that I’ve just got to back myself and fight a smart gameplan. I know I can beat him. It’s a last resort thing for me to turn it into a pub fight – and I’m sure he’s been in plenty of those types of fights – but it’ll be interesting to see how much he has left in the tank.
“He’s definitely a beatable fighter and we believe we can defeat him. We just need to box smart and I just need to do what I do best to get the win.”
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