Monday, April 15, 2019

Boxing Challenge: Derevyanchenko slips Culcay

Minneapolis isn't known as a huge boxing town, but the PBC has been running cards more often in the northern city and the two main events were not only boxing challenge bouts, but more importantly- two title eliminators brought to you by the IBF and the people that might have the fairest manner of determining their mandatory challenge and yet consistently seems to have the worst mandatory contenders.

The bout that actually was completed saw Sergiy Dereyvanchenko defeat Jack Culcay by a close and unanimous decision to become the IBF's mandatory contender to the winner of the May 4th unification match between Canelo Alvarez and Daniel Jacobs.
Jacobs currently holds the IBF title after winning the vacant championship via split decision over Dereyvanchenko but is an underdog against Alvarez for their fight.
The rugged Dereyvanchenko was expected to walk down and wear down the naturally smaller Culcay, who has spent most of his career at junior middleweight, but it was Culcay that was rallying later in the fight and staggered Derevyvanchenko in the tenth, almost knocking him down and pulled even on my card after ten rounds.
That was all Culcay seemed to have left as it was then Derevyanchenko winning the final two rounds, the twelfth by a sizable margin to win 115-113 on my card.
Derevyanchenko will give anyone a rugged fight and against the right fighter on the right night could pull an upset, while Culcay continues a run of coming very close in surprisingly entertaining fights and losing close decisions (Demetrius Andrade, Maciej Sulecki, and Dereyvanchenko) in them.

The main event was supposed to determine who would become the IBF's mandatory contender to their super middleweight champion Caleb Plant with former IBF champion Caleb Truax (PBC owns the market of super middleweight Caleb's) battling former WBO middleweight titleholder Peter Quillin.
The battle of the Caleb's or Plant-Quillin will have to wait as a clash of heads in round two opened a deep cut over Truax's eye/nose that forced a no-contest.
I suppose there could be a rematch, Plant could make an optional defense or the IBF could make their current highest rated contender Germany's Vincent Feigenbutz the mandatory contender for Plant, but when it comes to sanctioning bodies, trying to figure them out can be maddening.

In the boxing challenge, Ramon Malpica earned two points for Sergiy Dereyvanchenko's victory to my one and shaved a point off my lead.
My current lead is 79-71.

No comments: