Hersisia, 30-2 (24 KO’s), had started out camp in Duisburg, Germany with Ralf’s younger brother, and fellow ex-‘world’ champion, Graciano Rocchigiani, but wanted to spend the last three weeks with Ralf – called Rocky II in the German media, because he won his ‘world’ title after Graciano – in Berlin.

“Ralf knows me a little more intimately, because we worked very well and closely for my last two fights, so I forgot about spending the weekends home in favour of staying near to him,” reasoned the ‘Dutch Sonny Liston’, “I know this fight with Mercer is too important for me to take it easy.” Rocchigiani was pleased after the first few sessions, saying “Richel came very fit and he’s very determined. We just work on some little things now and get him mentally ready.”

The now 47-year-old Mercer, who gave up the WBO title in 1992 after winning it from Francesco Damiani and defending once against Tommy Morrison, certainly has fond memories of Europe, and in fact Scandinavia. In 2001, Mercer appeared in Denmark to knock out Brian Scott in two rounds and as recently as last September 2007, he needed just one round to smash Swedish hometown hero Mikael Lindblad to the canvas. Before the fight, Lindblad had sparred with Hersisia… Now the Dutchman can take revange for his former gym mate in the very same arena in Karlstad in a fight that promoter Anders Holmberg of Pugnus described as “the biggest fight in Sweden in the last 40 years”.

The 34-year-old Hersisia is coming off a one-year’s layoff, but is a clean and healthy liver even outside gym hours. Before stopping Brazilian champ Marcos Celestino in one round last September for the WBF Intercontinental belt, Hersisia had the highlight fight of his career, a give-and-take battle with world-ranked Taras Bidenko, which ended in a hotly disputed points defeat. This constitutes the only loss for the Dutch and Benelux champion in the last four years!

Explaining the inactivity, manager Olaf Schroeder of Fight Production says: “We had a lot of fights simply falling thru after Bidenko. That fight with Bidenko, I believe, opened a lot of people’s eyes about Richel. The ‘establishment’ could barely avoid him beating Bidenko and consequently we were shut out a bit. I was in talks about many fights against well-known opponents, but sooner or later it always was ‘No, thanks, but we changed our mind about fighting Hersisia’.” A fight, so much is for sure, is something a certain Raymond Mercer, despite his age, won’t shy away from.