Friday from Belfast will fill yet another of the WBA bauble belts and a European championship that I am very interested in watching.
I have been a bit disappointed in the pro career of touted former Olympian Michael Conlan, who has bounced between the junior featherweight and featherweight divisions but he'll be fighting for another WBA trinket at featherweight against former IBF junior featherweight champion T.J. Doheny in an all-Irish battle.
Conlan is the bigger puncher, although he's not a huge banger and is the naturally larger man.
Doheny lost his title to Daniel Roman by majority decision in a unification fight in April 2019 but somehow qualifies for this "title" shot after losing an eight-round decision to Ionet Baluta in March 2020- the same Baluta that Conlan defeated by majority decision in his last fight.
The much more interesting fight to me is the co-feature for the European bantamweight title between Lee McGregor and Vincent LeGrand.
Both fighters are undefeated, but England's McGregor is the bigger man as LeGrand has spent most of his career at flyweight.
McGregor stopped Karim Guerfi in one round, which was a solid win at the Euro level and is a stablemate of Josh Taylor and could be an opponent for Naoya Inoue with a win.
LeGrand of France has a strong amateur background and is highly thought of by Vincent Samano, who consistently gives him votes in the TRS boxing rankings.
This one may be the one fight that I'm looking forward to most this week.
Saturday Matchroom and DAZN return to Eddie Hearn's backyard for another fight camp with the main event deciding who owns the vacant IBF featherweight championship as Kid Galahad faces James Dickens in a rematch of their 2013 fight with Galahad stopping Dickens in the tenth round.
Galahad lost a split decision to Josh Warrington for this title in June 2019, but after defeating Claudio Marrero to again become Warrington's mandatory challenger, Warrington decided to vacate the title rather than face Galahad again.
Dickens has won eight fights in a row with the biggest being the fight before last in a majority decision over Leigh Wood, the upset winner last weekend of Xu Can for a WBA minor title.
The winner of this one should almost certainly (Matchroom promotes all three) face Wood in yet another All-British battle.
Fox finishes the boxing weekend Saturday night from Minneapolis with a welterweight fight between Eimantis Stanonis and veteran Luis Collazo, who claims he will be retiring win or lose after the fight.
Collazo has fought seven former or current world champions in his career but at forty years old is a bit past his prime.
Stanonis has been fast-tracked and was very impressive in a win over former world title challenger Thomas Dulorme in April.
Another welterweight fight for another WBA minor title will pit Argentine Gabriel Maestre against late replacement Mykal Fox,
Originally Canadian amateur star Cody Crowley was scheduled to face Mastre but was forced to bow out after testing positive for Covid.
Maestre, a two-time former Olympian, is only 3-0 and is 35 years of age but one of his three wins is a knockout of former contender Diego Chaves.
Fox lost his last fight to Lucas Santamaria and is coming in on fairly short notice but Fox is very tall for a welterweight and will try to use that to his best advantage.
The aforementioned Santamaria will open the card against shopworn former junior welterweight and welterweight champion Devon Alexander.
Alexander is 2-4-1 since losing his IBF title to Shawn Porter in 2013 and hasn't won since 2017, so this is a must-win for Alexander if he wants to go anywhere in his latest comeback.
I lead Ramon Malpica 100-90 in the Boxing challenge,
TRS: McGregor Split Decision
TRS: Maestre KO 9
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