By Ben Jacobs

Despite the difficulty in finding an opponent for his star man, Guillermo Rigondeaux, manager Gary Hyde is feeling positive ahead of one of his other fighters’ chances next week against Curtis Stevens.  Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam has been training in California for this IBF eliminator, and Hyde spoke to BoxingScene from their training camp via telephone on Wednesday.

“Hassan’s got to be switched on all the time, he can’t start trading to please the crowd, that’s what he did against [Peter] Quillin and it ended up bad for him,” said the Irishman. 

“He knows that he’s the smarter fighter, he’s got beautiful movement and you can’t stand and trade with a big puncher like Stevens.

“This is his second camp in America, before that he trained in Ireland and before that in the United Kingdom.  He doesn’t want to mention the sparring partners at the moment, but he’s been doing very well.”

Both men have been in exciting bouts in the past and both can certainly punch, while the potential for an exciting fight is there, Hyde doesn’t necessarily see it that way as he believes his charge will be able to control Stevens.

“I just see that Hassan is going to do a technical job on him, I don’t see Curtis Stevens having too much success, the plan is to take the fight away from him and put on a boxing exhibition.

“I expect him to be looking for counters and Hassan’s job is to make sure he doesn’t walk on to them.

“He [Stevens] is a quality fighter, a tough fighter and he’s a big puncher, he’ll be dangerous up to the last second as he showed in his last fight.  So I wouldn’t underestimate him for a second.

“It’s on ESPN 2 so it will have a massive audience.  Hassan’s well up for it, I‘ve never seen him so keyed up.  He’s in the best shape ever.”

Regarding Rigondeaux, Hyde expressed his belief that none of the Cuban’s divisional rivals want to face him.

“It seems like a swear word now to mention Rigondeaux’s name, at least [Leo] Santa Cruz said it, but they were just words, he didn’t mean it nor did he fool anybody by saying he wants Rigondeaux.  [Carl] Frampton and [Scott] Quigg just don’t want anything to do with him, and in my mind neither does Santa Cruz. 

“This shows you the state boxing is in when you’ve got two world champions and they don’t want to talk about the other world champion,” he continued. 

“What can you do?  You fight whoever’s there for you.  Avalos might have pulled out for a more lucrative opportunity fighting Frampton back in Belfast.”