Boxing Challenge: Estrada Unifies, Valdez wins

    Top Rank and ESPN+'s card from Glendale, Arizona featured two excellent fights at the top of the card with plenty of action.

In the main event, Oscar Valdez won the interim WBO junior lightweight title by a seventh-round knockout over Liam Wilson.

Normally, I don't acknowledge interim titles but Valdez will become the full champion sometime in May when Emanuel Navarette fights for the WBO lightweight title and is unlikely to return to the division, so will vacate the title.

I had Valdez slightly ahead at the time of the stoppage (58-56) and I thought the stoppage was a little early but Valdez was in command of the fight and it was an understandable decision.

Both fighters sustained facial damage and Valdez's face blew up for the second fight in a row, so there are still questions about how long Valdez will hold up in the future.

In the pre-fight, both WBC junior lightweight champion O'Shaquie Foster and IBF featherweight king Luis Alberto Lopez each mentioned future challenges against Valdez, should he emerge victorious, each could be a possible opponent later this year.

In the co-feature, Seniesa Estrada survived a stern test from Yokasta Valle to add the IBF and WBO minimumweight titles to the WBA and WBC titles she owned previously to win a unanimous decision.

All three judges' scores were the same as mine, 97-93 for Estrada, who outboxed Valle from the southpaw stance for most of the fight but Valle's straighter punches often found a home and under different rules (twelve-round fights or three-minute rounds) Valle might have won the decision as she was the stronger fighter down the stretch.

I'd like to see a rematch but that might be a hard sell for Estrada, who entered the fight with extensive emotions towards Valle's trainer, Gloria Alvarado, and Valle's promoters, Golden Boy, for her previous connections with both, and she could decide to move up in weight to junior flyweight or flyweight.

Valle was the more aggressive fighter so the crowd did have pockets of boos after the fight but I thought Gloria Alvarado's postfight comments were a bit out of line when you consider the personal issues that were involved.

Women's boxing does need to tweak one major issue and while I have always said the two-minute rounds prevent knockouts, a case can be made for the two-minute rounds adding more excitement.

The WBC seems to be the holdup on moving to three-minute rounds as many of the stars of the sport are asking to happen but I think that the best compromise could be for championship fights to stay at two minutes but move them from ten to twelve rounds.

It isn't perfect but I think it would be reasonable.

Lightweight Raymond Muratalla looked a little flat in winning a unanimous decision over Xolisani Ndongeni by scores of 99-91, 98-92, and 97-93, with my score agreeing with the final score listed.

Muratalla did not look dazzling against Ndongeni, who fought well but was unable to hit hard enough to keep Muratalla off him and was fortunate to make the final bell as Muratalla turned up the pace in the latter rounds.

Boxing Challenge

TRS: 32 Pts (3)

Ramon Malpica: 32 Pts (4)
Vince Samano: 15 Pts (0) 

Boxing Challenge

    After two tepid boxing weekends, this weekend is filled with fights, so many that I'm separating the Friday night card from the Saturday versions to preview.

ESPN+ and Top Rank have a very nice card for Friday from Glendale, Arizona with three challenge bouts with impact for the future.

In the main event, Oscar Valdez will meet Liam Wilson in a junior lightweight fight that technically isn't for a world title but could become one soon.

Valdez and Wilson have lost to WBO champion Emanuel Navarrete in excellent fights, and should Navarrete succeed in his match in May for the vacant WBO lightweight title against Denys Berinchyk, the winner of this fight for a minor WBO title would likely be promoted to the full championship, so there is plenty at stake here.

Both fighters accounted themselves well against Navarrete with Valdez losing a unanimous decision and Wilson losing by ninth-round knockout but has a case that he should have won after dropping Navarrete in the fourth round and Navarrete being given one of the more egregious long counts in recent memory allowing him to survive.

Wilson has won twice since his loss to Navarrete, while Valdez will be fighting for the first time after his defeat, so it'll be interesting to see how much Valdez has remaining in his return to the ring.

Style-wise, this should be an exciting battle, and on resume, Valdez has a huge edge with the key questions being- did Wilson merely catch lightning in a bottle against Navarrete, and did Valdez leave much of his remaining skills in the ring against Navarrete and may not be the same fighter from now on?

The co-feature will see the first women's bout in challenge history in a strawweight unification between WBA/WBC queen Seniesa Estrada and IBF/WBO boss Yokaska Valle.

I'm not the most knowledgeable women's boxing fan and we won't have an abundance of women's fights for the challenge but the top fights in the sport may be added in the future.

So, why now?

Because I love Seniesa Estrada's fighting style and enthusiasm for the sport, and she appears to be everything right with boxing- I like her. Sue me.

I've only seen a few fights of Valle but people more familiar with her than I am say that this is an excellent fight and far from a squash match for Estrada.

The other bout will pit talented lightweight contender Raymon Muratalla in a ten-rounder against Xolisani Ndongeni.

Muratalla has looked the part of a future champion in his two most recent wins, stopping Diego Torres and Jeremiah Nakathila while Ndongeni was stopped in eight in January by junior welterweight contender Arnold Barboza in his only outing against top competition.

It will be interesting to compare how Muratalla fares against Ndongeni against Barboza's performance against the native of South Africa.

Boxing Challenge

Junior Lightweights. 12 Rds 

Oscar Valdez vs Liam Wilson

Ramon Malpica: Valdez KO 8

TRS: Valdez Unanimous Decision

Vince Samano: Wilson Unanimous Decision

Women's Strawweight Unification 12 Rds

Seniesa Estrada vs Yokasta Valle

R.L and TRS: Estrada Unanimous Decision

V.S: Valle Unanimous Decision

Lightweights. 10 Rds

Raymond Muratalla vs Xolisani Ndongeni

R.L: Muratalla KO 9
TRS: Muratalla KO 6
V.S:  Ndongeni Unanimous Decision

The Overhand Right

   It's been a long time since an edition of the Overhand Right, so here's a chance to offer a few opinions on boxing outside of fight results.

I thought Mikaela Mayer did enough to nose out Natasha Jones in their women's welterweight title fight and while it was close on my card (96-94), I thought Mayer was the clear winner as most of the rounds were decisively won by one side or the other.

I wrote about the surprising decision loss by Artem Dalakian of his WBA flyweight title to Seigo Yuri Akui and how I thought Dalakian's style of moving away hurt him as judges prefer aggressive fighters.

Sooner or later, most fighters that use this style eventually lose a fight that they deserve to win due to this factor, and Dalakian proved the rule.

Fighters like Dalakian usually make dull fights and it's not always accompanied by outrage when they lose but that still doesn't make it right.

All too often in these style matchups, the aggressive fighter receives undeserved points from judges for "coming forward" or "trying to make the fight", which isn't part of the judging criteria.

The commentators for the fight (Crystina Poncher and ladies' flyweight champion Seniesa Estrada) seemed as puzzled as I had been when hearing of the decision. However, there were observers on the net who had the fight closer than I did.

While talking about Poncher and Estrada, I found their observations of the card from Osaka to be quite interesting.

Pomcher has always been a favorite of mine as an underrated blow-by-blow voice that I hope to see given higher-profile fights for ESPN/Top Rank cards. Still, the revelation was Estrada, who offered several intriguing points during the Kenshiro Teraji-Carlos Canizales main event battle.

Estrada's best point was about Teraji's directional movement, as the champion refused to move away from Canizales's power and instead moved right into the challenger's shots.

Estrada's statement proved true later in the fight when Teraji changed things up and began to get hit far less by the challenger.

Hoping to see and hear more in the future from Poncher and Estrada as a team at the announcer's table.

I see Teofimo Lopez continues to call out Terence Crawford for a mega-fight and while I'm not sure that it happens because Lopez isn't quite the PPV draw quite yet that the WBO junior welterweight champion thinks that he is, I am still interested in that pairing.

Lopez does tend to fight better in big fights than he does small ones as he showed in wins over Vasyl Lomachenko and Josh Taylor, his only loss to George Kambosos and a split decision win over Sandor Martin that many including myself thought he lost.

Lopez doesn't have the physical disadvantages that you would think he would either against Crawford, so it's not a mismatch in stature, and skill-wise Lopez can be competitive.

However, Crawford is in a different league, in my opinion, and I'm not sure of Lopez's promotional status with Top Rank after his title defense next month against Jamaine Ortiz.

Crawford has a lawsuit pending against Top Rank and is unlikely to deal with TR should Lopez remain bound to them.

PBC announced the top two fights on their first PPV with Amazon in March.

I'm not thrilled with the main event with WBO junior middleweight champion Tim Tszyu defending against former WBA and WBC welterweight champion Keith Thurman.

Tszyu has been an active contender and now champion, having fought three times in 2023.

The same can't be said of Thurman, who hasn't fought since a ho-hum decision win over Mario Barrios in February 2022, and his most recent fight before Barros was his loss to Manny Pacquiao in July 2019.

When you add that Thurman has never fought at 154 pounds and his 1-1 record in the last five years, it's easy to see Thurman as undeserving of this title opportunity.

The co-feature will have Rollie Romero, he of the questionable win over Ismael Barroso, defending against Isaac Cruz, who moves up from lightweight for the title chance.

While I don't have a problem with Cruz, the fight should be Romero-Barroso II, especially now that Barroso knocked out Ohara Davies in one round to grab the WBA interim title that was granted with Romero out with back issues.

WBA middleweight champion Erislandy Lara will defend his title for the first time against Michael Zerafa of Australia.

Lara, who has fought very soft competition in his four bouts since his 2019 draw with Brian Castano, was promoted to full champion last year when Gennady Golovkin vacated the title but hasn't fought at all since his May 2022 win over journeyman Gary "Spike" O'Sullivan.

Zerafa has lost against his best opponents Peter Quillin, Jeff Horn, and Kell Brook, and doesn't seem deserving of his status but neither does Lara really, so that says a lot for a sadly weak 160-pound division.