received media attention for his tattoos. During pre-fight press conference, Basile claimed to be "the devil between heavyweights", while Dimitrenko expressed his disgust with "so many tasteless tattoos" on Basile's body, and that he was going to punish Basile for them. In the lead-up to the fight, Dimitrenko's coach Fritz Sdunek said that his fighter was getting better with each bout, and that very soon he would become "the new Klitschko" and fight for the world heavyweight title. The fight took place at Porsche-Arena in Stuttgart and was televised on ZDF. It was Basile's first professional bout outside of South America. The fight lasted 54 seconds, with Basile's corner throwing in the towel after Basile could not respond to a barrage of shots from Dimitrenko. In his last fight of 2006, Dimitrenko faced an experienced American journeyman Billy Zumbrun on 18 November 2006, only three weeks after beating Basile. Originally, the main event of the card was supposed to be the fight between Felix Sturm and Gavin Topp, but the fight was postponed due to Sturm's injury. Dimitrenko, regarded as a popular commodity in Germany at the time, was considered to be an adequate replacement for Sturm. According to Dimitrenko, the fight turned out to be "tougher than expected". He won by a shut-out unanimous decision, knocking Zumbrun down in the first round and dominating him throughout the rest of the fight. Zumbrun was deducted a point in the tenth round for headbutting. The judges scored the bout 120–105, 119–107 and 120–106. By the end of 2006, Dimitrenko was ranked as the world's ninth best heavyweight by BoxRec. He was also ranked No.4 heavyweight contender by WBO. Dimitrenko then had two stay-busy fights in the first half of 2007, defeating American heavyweights Danny Batchelder and Malcolm Tann by mid-fight TKOs. By July 2007, Dimitrenko was ranked No.2 contender by WBO, No.6 contender by WBC and No. 10 contender by WBA. He then signed to face Timo Hoffmann on 17 November 2007. Hoffmann, who had previously faced fighters like Vitali Klitschko, Luan Krasniqi and Henry Akinwande and was known for his durability, had never been stopped inside the distance coming into this bout and was expected to be a tough challenge for Dimitrenko and an opportunity to elevate Dimitrenko's popularity in Germany. Dimitrenko weighed in at and was outweighed by Hoffmann by . This was also the first professional fight in