Press conference, public training, weigh-ins, media events: the last few days before a fight are particularly intense for a boxer. Jürgen Brähmer knows all this very well, the 44-year-old has twice won the light heavyweight world championship. He knows the dangers that lurk so close to a fight. That’s why Brahmer is particularly vigilant. “I’m not at all a friend of thinking that you’re going into vacation mode now,” he said on Wednesday. Many a boxer in Germany hopes that there will be advantages in significantly reducing the training intensity before a fight, “I can’t understand that at all”.
Brahmer is not thinking as a boxer at the moment, but as a trainer. Because on Saturday his protégé Robin Krasniqi returns to the ring after a 16-month break from fighting – so Krasniqi had enough vacation from boxing. In Munich’s Audi Dome, the 35-year-old meets Timur Nikarkhoev, who was born in Russia and lives in Belgium.
A few days before the fight, Krasniqi talks about his joy at boxing for the first time in his home town of Munich, about the good cooperation with Brähmer (“he gave me a very good plan”), about his fatherly joys, which he has been enjoying for a few months and the gave him even more motivation. But he still gets his greatest motivation from what happened to him in October 2021, when he was in the ring for the last time. At that time he lost his world championship belt in the light heavyweight division after a controversial fight verdict to Dominic Bösel.
After the “so-called verdict,” as Krasniqi called it and which he still regards as a “big scandal,” things got hot. The Krasniqi side lodged a protest with the world federation and tried to reach an out-of-court settlement in their favour. A sponsor even provided one million euros to finance the legal steps. In vain.
The goal is to fight for a world championship belt again – ideally this year
After the big disappointment, Krasniqi went through a sporting valley. “In the first six to eight months after that, my motivation was zero,” he says today. That was sad and it hurt. “But now it’s forgotten,” he emphasizes. “And my motivation is even greater.” The fight against Nikarkhoev on Saturday should be the first step backwards. The goal is to fight for a world championship belt again, ideally this year.
With the help of Brahmer, Krasniqi has rediscovered his passion for boxing. Actually, Krasniqi’s plan was to box for another two years, “but Jürgen gave me the motivation to continue for five more years”. For almost three weeks Krasniqi has been trained by Brahmer, against whom he himself stood in the ring eight years ago – and lost. Brähmer wasn’t able to change much in the few weeks, “we didn’t have the time for that at all,” says the 44-year-old. “My job was to maximize and refine what he can do.”
Brahmer focused on Krasniqi’s footwork in preparation for the fight, as he sees “still a lot of potential”. And that could be the key against Nikarkhoev, who could become “very uncomfortable”. “I think you get him through speed,” says Brahmer. Krasniqi is ready: for Saturday – and for a possible third fight against Bösel. Such a “would be nice, very, very nice,” says Krasniqi with a smile, “but I don’t think they have the courage for it.”