WATCH: ’Bring on Anthony Joshua!’ Kevin Lerena aims to be heavyweight in the ‘fistic art’

Cape Town - When Kevin Lerena speaks about boxing, he refers to the sport as a “fistic art”.

That description tells you a lot about the 29-year-old southpaw. You get boxers who are looking for a quick payday, or that one-punch knockout, and they quickly surrender when they feel the heat in the ring.

Not Lerena. He is a true student of the sport. He quickly rattled off the biggest names in the heavyweight division, where he will enter a whole new world when he takes on Romania’s Bogdan Dinu in a WBA Intercontinental Championship bout at Emperors Palace on March 26.

“The pinnacle of boxing is heavyweight boxing. When people speak about (boxing) – fine, if you take away Floyd and Canelo – they speak about Mike Tyson, Holyfield, Ali, Lewis, Klitschko, Corrie Sanders, Gerrie Coetzee… the list goes on,” Lerena said.

“There is no more prestigious division in boxing than heavyweight, so for me, it’s an honour to compete in that division. Let’s see what we can do. Like I said, it’s a long road, but it’s a road that I’ve walked before, and I have no problem going there.”

Lerena has moved on from the cruiserweights, where he was a seven-time IBO champion, and feels that there is a real opportunity to rule the heavyweight division in the not-too-distant future.

He was speaking to Independent Media at an event hosted by his sponsor, Under Armour – the Mental Health Symposium – in Cape Town recently, where he detailed some of the challenges he faced in having to make the 91kg mark to continue fighting in the cruiserweight division.

“Ten to 14 days before a world title fight, I naturally walk around at 104kg. This is who I am, and from the age of 26, it started becoming a lot harder to pull that weight off. When I was a lot younger, my