Pro Football: Zbikowski's Ready for Some Football

Baltimore Ravens safety Tom Zbikowski, who went 3-0 with two knockouts as a professional boxer since the NFL lockout began, told Patch on Wednesday that he has decided to concentrate solely on football.

Despite the NFL owners and players not having a collective bargaining agreement signed and a lockout still in place, Zbikowski has pulled out of a June 4 bout to begin informal football workouts with teammates in anticipation of a potential end to the work stoppage.

"Just seeing when that lockout was lifted, even just for the day, a sort of panic set in that you know, if we were ready to start back, that I would not be ready for a 16-game season," said the 6-foot Zbikowski, who was still a junior defensive back at Notre Dame in June 2006 when he debuted as a professional fighter with a 49-second knockout of Robert Bell at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Zbikowski added, "I just think that knowing that it's about to be June, if I fight on June 4, I would need another two months to get ready for football, and I would be looking at Aug. 4 for training camp.

“I have a strong loyalty to the Baltimore Ravens and to my teammates, which the Ravens are, so I'm not in a position where I can put myself first in my career and to be that selfish to the Baltimore Ravens just because I have the passion and the love for another sport."

Promoted by Top Rank Promotions, the 26-year-old Zbikowski (4-0, three knockouts) scored a first-round knockout of Richard Bryant, a four-round decision over Caleb Gummet, and another first-round knockout of Blake Warner, respectively, on March 12, March 26 and April 23 during the NFL's work stoppage.

Zbikowski said it was just time to get ready for football.

“I understood how long that it took to transition into boxing and to kind of get to where I was feeling pretty good, which was that April 23 fight, which was almost about two and a half months of training," Zbikowski said.

"You know, being an NFL football player is not exactly easy either. So I knew that just looking at the calendar and understanding that I'm going to need a month and a half to two months to really get back into football shape," Zbikowski said. "That's at least what it's going to take to get my body ready to go for at least 16 games. That's going to take my body a lot longer than a simple week off to get into football just because I'm getting back into shape coming off of boxing."
 
A former amateur boxer who was drafted by the Ravens in 2008, Zbikowski was scheduled to face Mike Howell (2-1-1, one KO) on the under card of a main event featuring WBC middleweight (160 pounds) champ Sebastian Zbik and challenger Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The fight would have been Zbikowski’s first since an odd turn of events as he, along with several other fighters, were suspended following the April 23 card for testing positive for the marijuana substance THC. The suspension was quickly lifted after Zbikowski provided a clean test immediately afterward.

The Ravens defensive back said he has not closed the door on his boxing career, just put it off to the side until his football days are over.

"You know, it was a very tough decision to give up the Staples Center and being able to fight there with the under card that they are having. That was a really tough decision," said Zbikowski. "But I think that at this point in my life, it was the smartest decision that I could have made, and, hopefully, God willing, I'll be back to boxing once my football career is over."