Mairis Breidis will defend his IBF cruiserweight championship against Germany's Artur Mann in Breidis's native Latvia.
Breidis is coming off his majority decision win over Yuniel Dorticos to win Dorticos's title and the World Boxing Super Series and is also the man that in the first cruiserweight WBSS, took Oleksandr Usyk to the edge of defeat in losing a majority decision in a fight that I scored a draw.
I had proposed, immediately following Usyk's title win over Anthony Joshua, that should Joshua decline the rematch clause, that a second fight against Briedis, who had announced that he may test the heavyweight division after his win over Yuniel Dorticos, would make sense as a title defense.
Mann isn't a big puncher (nine KO's) and other than a nice 2018 in Chicago over then-promising Alexei Zubov, lacks wins over quality cruiserweights and was knocked out in his only loss to Kevin Lerena in 2019.
ESPN Plus looks to have the best fight of the weekend as Emanuel Navarrete defends his WBO featherweight championship against Joet Gonzalez Friday night in San Diego.
The match should feature lots of punches thrown with the always active Navarrete leading the way in every fight that he is in.
Navarrete will be making the second defense of his title that he won over Ruben Villa last October in taking the title vacated by Shakur Stevenson.
Gonzalez lost a lopsided decision for the same title that was vacated in 2019 to Stevenson and won a decision over veteran Miguel Marriaga in his only fight since his loss to Stevenson.
The question for me is this- Is Gonzalez a solid fighter or of title timber?
Gonzalez will need to be the latter in order to fend the whirlwind-like Navarrete.
DAZN will be back on Saturday with the sphinx-like Mikey Garcia's return to the ring from Fresno, California.
Garcia has been inactive since decisioning Jessie Vargas twenty months ago just before the beginning of the pandemic and in a typical Garcia march to his own tune, he'll be returning in a fight that next to no one cares about against veteran vagabond Sandor Martin.
Martin is established as a European-level fighter at best and is badly overmatched in this fight but Mikey Garcia wants a tune-up and since he isn't signed with a promoter, Garcia will get what he wants.
I don't have a problem with showcase fights within reason but this one isn't even mildly compelling.
The only question in this fight is will Garcia stop Martin, who went the distance in his only two losses?
The co-feature is interesting as Elwin Soto defends his WBO light flyweight title against his mandatory challenger Jonathan Gonzalez.
Gonzalez is a solid veteran but since he was stopped in seven by Kosei Tanaka in an attempt at Tanaka's WBO flyweight title, Gonzalez has notched two wins against fighters with records of 25-10 and 26-18.
Could it be that Gonzalez is from Puerto Rico where the WBO is based? Nahhh.
Most Soto fights are action scraps though and Gonzalez is decent enough to make this one entertaining but as a mandatory challenger, I do wonder.
In an untelevised bout in the United States pairing from Newcastle, England, veteran heavyweights Hughie Fury faces Christian Hammer in a fight that will likely see the winner move up a bit and receive a title eliminator somewhere (and another paycheck) and the loser continues to slide down to journeyman status.
Fury fits best in the eleven through twenty rang in the heavyweight rankings with all three of his losses in attempts to defeat the next level of contenders (Joseph Parker, Alexander Povetkin, Kubrat Pulev) but Hammer is a boxer on the level of fighter that Fury is a step above.
Hammer is pretty durable and that's his best attribute and combined with Fury's sometimes less than aggressive manner makes this one a good bet to go the full ten rounds.
In the boxing challenge, I lead Ramon Malpica 135-116.
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