We start in Allentown, Pennsylvania with a PBC card on Showtime and the annual appearance of WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell.
Russell, who fights once a year, clicks up a victory, makes grand proclamations and then returns to the Washington area like Puff the Magic Dragon slipping into his cave to await his next year's contest, won a unanimous decision over mandatory challenger Tug Nyambayar to retain his championship.
Russell controlled the fight for the first eight rounds with those rounds being more tactical than action-filled, but Nyambayar picked up the pace in the final third of the fight, landed his best shots and forced Russell into entertaining exchanges.
The late rally wasn't close to enough for the challenger from Mongolia, who lost 116-112 on my card, which was the closest card among the three judges and Nyambayar may look back on this fight and bemoan his lack of punches that caused him to fall behind on the cards as he was effective, especially to the body, when he was offensively active.
Russell announced plans to move up two divisions to lightweight, should a hoped for, but unlikely fight with Leo Santa Cruz falls through, which seems like a pipe dream with most of the best lightweights being involved with Top Rank rather than Russell's PBC.
The co-feature saw Guillermo Rigondeaux drop to bantamweight to win another tedious split decision and pick up a minor title with a split decision over Liborio Solis.
Solis started aggressively in the first round and seemed to surprise Rigondeaux with a right hand that forced the Cuban to grab and hold on for the end of the round.
Rigondeaux then settled into his standard (read dull) style and except for a seventh-round technical knockdown that drove Solis into the ropes from a left hand and the ropes holding him up, the fight was generally lacking in action.
I saw Rigondeaux a 115-112 winner and despite the split card, I don't need to see this fight again.
On DAZN from Sheffield, England, Kell Brook returned from a ring absence and an awful albeit winning last fight against Michael Zerafa to dominate Mark DeLuca of the United States and knock DeLuca out in the seventh round in a squash match intended to make Brook shine.
This fight did that as Brook smashed DeLuca's nose in the third and scored a knockdown with a strong left hook that saw DeLuca rise just as the bell clanged.
DeLuca was hurt again in the fourth before being dropped for the count with an impressive left hook/uppercut with blood flowing furiously through his nose.
Brook mentioned a rematch with Errol Spence, which is unlikely, but the likely next step on his comeback could be against fellow Briton and Matchroom promotee Liam Smith in what could be an interesting fight with both fighters attempting to make a last stand in the sport.
In the Matchroom co-feature, Kid Galahad outboxed Claudio Marrero for the entire fight and forced Marrero's corner to stop the fight at the end of the eighth round to move into the IBF's mandatory contender position for the second time in the featherweight division.
Galahad stood on the outside, landed his jab at all and methodically drained the aggression from Marrero as he won all but the first round on my scorecard.
Galahad now qualifies for a rematch against IBF champion Josh Warrington from their fight last year that saw Warrington retain his title via split decision in a close but ugly mix of styles that will see very few looking forward to a rematch.
The final fight of the challenge saw Artem Dalakian retain his WBA flyweight title by unanimous decision over Josber Perez in Kyiv, Ukraine.
I have this fight available via YouTube, but I have yet to watch it as of this writing.
In the boxing challenge, I outscored Ramon Malpica seven to five on the week with the difference being my extra points from Gary Russell's decision win and Kell Brook's KO.
I extended my lead to 24-20 in the early part of the marathon.
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