ESPN and Showtime go head to head on Saturday night with two fight challenge bouts.
ESPN/Top Rank have the fight that I'm most looking forward to this week from Carson California with undefeated WBO featherweight champ Oscar Valdez defending against former junior featherweight top contender Scott Quigg, who has suffered just one loss, a split decision to Carl Frampton.
Quigg will certainly be the toughest opponent of Valdez's career and Valdez, in return, will be Quigg's sternest test since stepping up to the featherweight division.
This should be an action fight that should be nip and tuck all the way.
Valdez is fighting Quigg mainly because the other champions in the division are on the PBC side of the business and unification fights would be tough to make.
A victory by Quigg might be better suited to make those fights as his promotion alignment with England's Eddie Hearn makes things a bit easier to work out as Hearn is able to deal with any of the three major television networks and their promoters.
The co-feature offers a pair of undefeated junior lightweights looking to take a step forward as Andy Vences faces Erick DeLeon.
Both will be facing their toughest opponents, so it should at least be interesting to see which steps up.
Vences does have a win over Casey Ramos, who is the best opponent of the two, so I'd make Vences a hairline favorite based on that win.
Showtime heads to Texas for another Mikey Garcia stop on his winning belts that he generally doesn't plan on defending as he challenges Sergey Lipinets for his IBF junior welterweight title.
Lipinets won his title in his last fight over Akihiro Hondo for one of the titles that Terence Crawford vacated.
Lipinets really doesn't have a top ten name on his record, so despite looking good on the times that I have seen him, one cannot truly know just how good Lipinets is and if he can be a true challenge to Garcia.
As for the talented Garcia, who seems to be the ultimate businessman/fighter and seems to avoid even the most remote challenge, it's too bad that he makes these decisions as he's quite a talented fighter.
The co-feature fills another of those vacated Terence Crawford belts at 140 pounds as Rances Barthelemy and Kiryl Relikh settle a dispute for the WBA version of the title.
Last May, they fought and most thought Relikh had done more than enough to defeat Barthelemy before the Hamburglar arrived and handed Barthelemy a jaw-dropping unanimous decision victory.
Usually, in these situations, the rematch favors the fighter that was given the bad decision, but with a title on the line, I'm not sure either fighter has an edge,
Watch who the referee is, if it's the notoriously awful Lawrence Cole, I wouldn't be surprised a bit to have Cole play a role in the outcome.
Showtime starts the weekend with a world-class ShoBox event with two high-level eliminators on the card.
The main event sends talented prospect Regis Prograis against Julius Indongo for the ridiculous WBC interim title at 140 pounds.
It's ridiculous mainly because the title last held by Crawford is still vacant (filled next Saturday by the winner of Jose Ramirez vs Amir Imam) and should you really have an interim champion when the regular champion hasn't been decided yet?
Even with that, I think that this fight (and its resulting winner) could have a better claim to a world title than Barthelemy-Relikh or even the other WBC title (Ramirez is still untested for all of his talent and Imam is just 1-1 against top 50 competition).
Indongo is a former champion at the weight (WBA and IBF) and lost those two titles last summer to Crawford in a four-title unification fight in his only loss.
The exciting and undefeated Prograis looked very impressive in his last fight knocking out the previously undefeated Joel Diaz and has 17 KO's in his twenty wins.
I'm looking forward to this one more than any of these fights except Valdez-Quigg...
In the other televised fight, undefeated Ivan Baranchyk, a ShoBox staple, faces last-minute replacement Petr Petrov in an IBF junior welterweight eliminator.
Petrov will be a litmus test for Baranchyk as he loses to championship level fighters but prevails against the fighters under that guideline.
The winner will be in line for the Garcia-Lipinets winner, but let's face it, Garcia is unlikely to defend that title, let alone against someone that does not bring extra cash to the table.
In the Boxing Challenge, I lead Ramon Malpica 36-27.
WBO Featherweight Title. 12 Rds
Oscar Valdez vs Scott Quigg
Both: Valdez Unanimous Decision
IBF Junior Welterweight Title,12 Rds
Sergey Lipinets vs Mikey Garcia
R.L: Garcia KO 7
TRS: Garcia Unanimous Decision
Vacant WBA Junior Welterweight Title. 12 Rds
Rances Barthelemy vs Kiryl Relikh
R.L: Relikh Split Decision
TRS: Barthelemy Unanimous Decision
Junior Welterweights. 12 Rds
Julius Indongo vs Regis Prograis
R.L: Indongo KO 6
TRS: Indongo Unanimous Decision
Junior Welterweights.12 Rds
Ivan Baranchyk vs Petr Petrov
Both: Baranchyk Unanimous Decision
Junior Lightweights. 10 Rds
Andy Vences vs Erick DeLeon
R.L: DeLeon Unanimous Decision
TRS: Vences Unanimous Decision
No comments:
Post a Comment