The best fight of the weekend is from Top Rank on ESPN as Emanuel Navarrete defends his WBO junior lightweight title for the first time against former WBO featherweight and junior lightweight champion Oscar Valdez from Glendale, Arizona.
Navarrete looked very vulnerable in winning the vacant title over unheralded Australian Liam Wilson by ninth-round knockout but was given the greatest of all breaks with a tremendously long count when Wilson knocked down Navarrete in round four and easily could have been counted out.
Valdez was shut out by Shakur Stevenson in losing his title (the title that Navarrete holds) but decisioned Adam Lopez in his first fight since losing to Stevenson and that fight will do Valdez a lot of good entering this fight.
It is a very even fight that almost assuredly will be an action affair with lots of punches landed and taken for both men.
Two notes that make me lean a smidge toward Valdez.
The first is that Navarrete isn't known for a spartan life outside the ring while Valdez is a diligent trainer and has never shown up out of shape, which could be a factor.
The other is Valdez's technical superiority against the winging punches of Navarrete, which could result in Valdez having success countering the champion.
In the afternoon, Matchroom and DAZN starts the day from London with three heavyweight bouts of various quality and interest.
In the main event, former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua continues his attempt to return from his pair of defeats to Oleksandr Usyk as he faces Robert Helenius.
Helenius is fighting on one week's notice after Dillian Whyte failed his PED test and was taken out of the fight.
Helenius was knocked out in one round by Deontay Wilder last year and hadn't fought since until a lower-level win last week (yes, last week) in his native Finland.
Joshua is rumored to be facing Wilder later in the year in the UAE, so while he needs a win to secure that win, a spectacular knockout and a short evening would help in selling a fight against Wilder.
The co-feature pits Filip Hrgovic, the number one contender of the IBF, against undefeated Australian Demsey McKean.
Hrgovic won a split decision over Zhilei Zhang to secure the mandatory slot for the IBF and Zhang has since become the WBO top contender after his upset win over Joe Joyce.
McKean is unbeaten but is facing his first stern test and his punches are dreadfully slow, so Hrgovic shouldn't have problems outboxing McKean.
The other fight pairs two fighters that are well past their best days but might give watchers a few fun rounds and maybe an exciting ending as Dereck Chisora will take on Gerald Washington in a match of two former world title challengers.
At their peak, Chisora was the better puncher and owned the better chin but at this stage of their careers, neither fighter has much to offer other than heart against world-class opponents.
Chisora has lost four of his last five fights but its no shame losing to the two heavyweight champions (Tyson Fury stopped him in ten and Oleksandr Usyk won a unanimous decision over Chisora) or former WBO champion Joseph Parker twice with a split decision win over another former world title challenger Kubrat Pulev in between.
Plus the Parker fights were entertaining wars and I scored Chisora the winner by one point in the first fight but Chisora has taken a tremendous amount of punishment in his career and I wish for his sake that he would step away from the ring.
Washington is just 2-5 (losing by KO in all five losses) in his last seven if you included his fifth-round KO loss to Deontay Wilder in 2017 in that total, has been stopped in his two recent fights to Charles Martin in six in 2020 and in eight to Ali Demirezen on New Years Day 2002, and has not fought since the Demirezen loss.
I actually don't mind fights like these if these fighters are matched properly against others of their type but my concern about this fight, as fun as it may turn out to be, is that Eddie Hearn (or anyone else) decides that the winner deserves a try against a contender or prospect in their next fight.
Showtime will be in Oxon Hill, Maryland with three fights with a main event that will fill the final vacancy in the bantamweight division that Naoya Inoue created when he dropped his four titles to move to the 122-pound division.
Emmanuel Rodriguez will attempt to regain the IBF title that he lost to Inoue in 2019 in the World Boxing Super Series semi-final against Melvin Lopez.
Rodriguez won the first round against Inoue before his second-round defeat and his loss to Reymart Gaballo following the Inoue loss was a split decision that I thought Rodriguez deserved.
In his last fight, Rodriguez won a dominant ten-round technical decision over undefeated Gary Antonio Russell, knocking Russell down in the eighth and losing only one round on one judge's card in victory.
Nicaragua's Melvin Lopez is 29-1 with nineteen KOs but almost all against fighters with average records and is somewhat of an unknown quantity.
Unbeaten junior welterweight Gary Antuanne Russell has won all sixteen of his fights by knockout but like the other talented members of his fighting family, doesn't fight very often.
And like his older brother, former WBC featherweight champion Gary, that's too bad because Gary Antuanne is pretty good.
Russell's opponent is unbeaten Kent Cruz, who is 16-0-3 with two draws against Enriko Gogokhia in his last two fights.
Those are Cruz's only fights against good opponents and Russell will be a step up from Gogokhia, so it's fair to question Cruz's chances.
The opening fight will match a terrific young prospect in Travon Marshall and former Olympian Gabriel Maestre in a welterweight ten-rounder.
Marshall has looked the part in his eight wins and takes a step up against Maestre, who "won" a decision over Mykal Fox in 2021 that was so awful that it almost cost the WBA its life as a sanctioning body and led to the process (still ongoing) of the organization ending its "regular" and "interim" titles.
Maestre forced washed-up former champion, Devon Alexander to surrender after three rounds, so that's something I guess but if Marshall is as good as many think, Maestre shouldn't have enough to trouble Marshall too much.
Boxing Challenge
Vince Samano: Valdez KO 9
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