Much of today's most notable and most exciting comes from Canada where fans are in for a treat, in fact they are in for one of the best shows this year with 3 genuinely notable bouts and 2 lesser quality support bouts. As well as the Canadian show we also have notable action in Mexico with several interesting contests. We'll start with Canada where the main event is a blockbuster Light Heavyweight bout between the thunderously hard hiting Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23) and tough Canadian based Haitian Jean Pascal (29-2-1-1, 17). Kovalev will be defending the WBA “Super” , IBF and WBO titles in his first bout since he convincingly defeated Bernard Hopkins last year and this could be his second big win. As for Pascal he needs a good win here if he's to remain a big fighter fighter, especially after his farcical contest with Roberto Bolonti last time out and his terrible unexciting contest with Lucian Buta last January. A brilliant support bout will see former Cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham (28-6, 13) battle against unbeaten Heavyweight hopeful Vyacheslav Glazkov (19-0-1, 12) who has been really been unconvincing in recent contests. Glazkov needs a good performance to remain relevant whilst Cunningham will be hoping to move one fight closer to a potential mega-payday which he is well due before his retirement. The second big support bout will see Vasily Lepikhin (17-0, 9) battle against Isaac Chilemba (23-2-2, 10) in a really well match Light Heavyweight bout. The winner here may well be the next opponent for the Kovalev/Pascal winner and it wouldn't be a surprise for this contest to be a very competitive bout. In a supporting under-card bout Nadjib Mohammedi (36-3, 22), another top Light Heavyweight contender, will take on Lee Campbell (8-1, 4) in a stay busy fight whilst former Light Welterweight title challenger Dierry Jean (27-1, 19) takes on Carlos Manuel Reyes (25-3-1, 17) in what should be an easy win for Jean. In Tijuana, Mexico fans will get the chance to see former world IBF Super Flyweight champion Juan Carlos Sanchez Jr (19-3-1, 9) battle against the highly experienced Luis Melendez (41-9-1, 30), himself a former world title challenger. This could be an good contest but Sanchez Jr should be too fresh for the 35 year old Melendez. On the same card Yazmin Rivas (31-8-0-4, 9) looks to defend her WBC female Bantamweight title against the little known Celina Salazar (6-1-2, 1). On a second Mexican card, held in México, fan will see heavy handed Bantamweight contender Julio Ceja (28-1, 26) battle against former world title challenger Oscar Blanquet (32-9-1, 23), who enters this bout on a run of 5 successive losses including a loss to Akira Yaegashi and a stoppage to Roman Gonzalez. (Image courtesy of fightnetwork.com)
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With the winder Olympics kicking off it's obvious that boxing isn't the top of many people's agenda right now. Thankfully though there was a trickling of interesting bouts from Mexico this past weekend with several having potential knock on effects to Asian fighters. The most notable bout of the weekend saw WBC Light Flyweight champion Adrian Hernandez (29-2-1, 18) scoring an expected victory over the over-matched Janiel Rivera (10-2-2, 6). We couldn't understand what Rivera had done to deserve a title fight and the class difference between the two was obviously despite the fact Janiel did try. With the victory being a relatively easy 3rd round TKO for Hernandez it wouldn't be out of the question for him to return to the ring in April or May in either a voluntary defense against Naoya Inoue or a unification bout with WBA champion Kazuto Ioka, both of whom are desperate for a big bout to start 2014. We dare say that it goes down to who will offer Hernandez a better deal between those two men though we do fancy both to beat Hernandez who is pretty decent but nothing spectacular, despite this performance. On the same show as Hernandez's title defense we also saw the very promising Julio Ceja (26-1, 24) in action. As with Hernandez, Ceja did as expected as he recorded a 4th round stoppage over Jesus Acosta (14-3-2, 10). Ranked by the WBC, IBF and WBO Ceja is a serious title threat and could well find himself in the ring with Shinsuke Yamanaka, Ryosuke Iwasa, Tomoki Kameda or Tabtimdaeng Na Rachawat somewhere down the line and we'd certainly not complain about most of those bouts. Whilst both Ceja and Hernandez did what was expected of them, the biggest story of the night was that Miguel Beltran Jr (28-3-0-1, 18), a top ranked Super Featherweight, failed to do what was expected of him. In 2012 Beltran gave Roman Martinez a genuinely tough contest, this time around however he was stopped by teenage sensation Carlos Diaz Ramirez (13-0, 7) in a bout that has likely ended Beltran's title dreams whilst shooting Ramirez into title contention. Before the stoppage Beltran was dominant and and looking at this contest Ramirez doesn't have the experience to really compete with the likes of Takashi Uchiyama, Takashi Miura or Daiki Kaneko. Saying that though he will certainly be in at least 1 world ranking when they are next updated. When we think of the Light Flyweight division we think about the way Asia are dominating it. It may sound silly but 3 of the 4 major title holders are Asian and most of the top contenders are as well. The one champion who isn't from Asia is of course Mexican Adrian Hernandez (28-2-1, 17), the WBC champion. Hernandez is certainly a man who is being targeted by numerous Asian fighters but unfortunately this weekend he won't be fighting one of those but will instead be taking on unheralded Puerto Rican Janiel Rivera (10-1-2, 6). Hernandez, best known to us for his two bouts with Kompayak Porpramook, is a decent fighter but looks like the weakest of the champions at 108lbs. Even though he's far from the best champion we still imagine he'll manage to get past Rivera who is yet to score any sort of a notable victory. The winner of Hernandez/Rivera will be targeted by the likes of Naoya Inoue, who is wanting a world title in his 6th professional bout, and Kazuto Ioka, who is hoping to unify belts this year. The Hernandez/Rivera bout is one of two world title bouts on this show with the other one, a WBA female Bantamweight, looking just as much of a mismatch as Irma Garcia (8-1-1, 1) defends her belt against the very limited Nazly Maldonado (1-3). We've got to say that this is one of the most disgusting world title bouts in history and it really can't be defended in any which way. One other bout on this same Mexican card that is worth noting is one between the highly ranked Bantamweight Julio Ceja (25-1, 23) and Jesus Acosta (14-2-2, 10). It's hard to see Ceja losing but we would advise keeping an eye on him. Ceja is a genuine Bantamweight contender with serious power and at just 21 years old he seems like a guy who could be around for a while. He's younger than the likes of Suriyan Sor Rungvisai, Ryosuke Iwasa, Pungluang Sor Singyu and Tomoki Kameda though he will likely have to face one of those fighters if he's to ever become a world champion in a division that Asia does seem to be on the verge of dominating. |
InternationalWe know that not every fight involves an Asian fighter but a lot of fights do affect Asian fighter. As a result we've decided to add this new section to Asian boxing where we look at selected International bouts. Archives
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