American Allan Green (29-1, 20KO’s) has officially been confirmed as Jermain Taylor’s replacement in the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic super middleweight tournament. Taylor, after suffering consecutive KO losses to Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham, pulled out a month or so ago.

30 year old Green is a good choice although many would have preferred a higher ranked contender such as Lucian Bute or Green conqueror Edison Miranda to take Taylor’s place, as evidenced by our recent poll right here on fightfranchise.com, but Bute and Miranda signed to fight each other only recently.

However, Green is a solid, tidy boxer and apart from the aforementioned loss to Edison Miranda by UD after a wild bout where knockdowns were exchanged, he has proven his legitimacy as a top level operator.

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Finally Joe Louis’ childhood town of LaFayette, Alabama have decided to pay their respect to the great former heavyweight champ by placing a statue of the ‘Brown Bomber’ outside the Chambers County Courthouse in LaFayette.

To the credit of the residents of the town, it was them that managed to raise the $6000 in order for the statue to be erected. It will be made from 100% pure Alabama red granite.

Louis is of course most associated with the city of Detroit, having had a stadium named after him there (the Joe Louis arena, most famously home of the Detroit Red Wings) as well as a 24-foot bronze arm and fist sculpted in his honor in the 1980s.

The LaFayette statue will be unvelied this Saturday (27th Feb) and Louis’ son and family members are expected to be amongst those who attend.

On tonight’s big Frank Warren card from Wembley Arena, London, undefeated Nathan Cleverly 19-0-0 (9) won his third title as a pro as he picked up the European light-heavyweight title, stopping Italian Antonio Brancalion 32-8-2 (8) in five rounds. It was an impressive display from Cleverly, who will surely now be looking for World title honours.

Right from the offset Cleverly looked fired up, and there was no feeling out process as both fighters got stuck right in. Brancalion was no bum and gave pretty much as good as he got in the opening session. The theme continued for the next couple of rounds, with Cleverly just getting the better of things, but never totally dominating the action. The fight was fought briskly and both boxers took some heavy shots.

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