By Edward Chaykovsky
Olympic bronze medal winner David Price is picking up the pieces after learning that his recent opponent Erkan Teper received a two-year ban from the sport after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.
They fought for the vacant EBU world title in July and Teper scored a stunning two round knockout of Price. The result has since been changed to a no-contest.
According to his promoter Kalle Sauerland, Price will regroup and return to the ring in 2016 with another potential EBU title shot in his sights.
"It's all very frustrating, because at the end of the day, Pricey has lost six months of his career," Sauerland told Sky Sports. "My brother spoke to him over the last couple of days. He's obviously disappointed, I think that's the best way of describing it, and angered.
"David will definitely want to return to the ring and of course this will put him in a strong position, because they have to re-instate him at the top of the rankings. He will have a mandatory bout at some time next year for this title, if that's the route that we go down."
Team Sauerland still have very high hopes for Price.
"I've always said that David has the tools to go on and do very big things in this sport," Sauerland said. "I hope that this can be a positive turn. The sporting side, I know he's looking at putting together his team at the moment. In a strange way, it's raised his profile, but I don't think it's the issue here. We also have to look on the negative side, it doesn't reflect well on our sport.
"It's not an endemic problem in our sport, that's definitely not the case, but on the other hand we have to make sure that things like this can never, ever happen again."
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