Back in the Ring | by Pat

Looks like Zibby is resuming his boxing career, with a charity bout scheduled for March 6th against Kevin Murphy at the Century Center in South Bend.

'Man, I'm pumped up about this,'' Zbikowski said of fighting in South Bend. ''Most of my teammates will be there. And the Notre Dame fans will get a chance to see me fight. ''I'm not trying to go in there and just knock somebody out. I want to show off my actual skills.''

The fight will benefit Hannah & Friends and might not be his only boxing match of 2007.

There has been talk of him fighting in Chicago on the undercard of a David Diaz-Erik Morales lightweight championship battle in May.

''I couldn't really see that Chicago thing happening, but anything is possible,'' Zbikowski said. ''Once spring ball starts, I'm just going to be concentrated on football.''

After Zibby's somewhat inconsistent season on the gridiron, I'm sure some ND fans would love to see him concentrate solely on football -- "all bawl" as a certain head coach used to say. My guess is the shoulder injury he suffered against Purdue had far more to do with his uneven play last season than the few weeks he spent training for boxing. The wrinkles in the defense that Rick Minter introduced last year and where they had Zibby lining up at the snap also had an effect on his production (perhaps a topic worthy of a future post). It's going to be very interesting to see how Corwin Brown decides to use Zbikowski in the new Irish defense.

In the meantime, it should be fun for Irish fans to watch Zibby climb back into the ring, knock some poor guy around, and raise some money for charity. I wonder if this Kevin Murphy will give him a tougher fight than Robert "Tomato Can" Bell.