37-year-old former three division world champion Erik “El Terrible” Morales (52-9, 36 KO’s) returns to the ring in two months to face Jorge Paez Jr. (37-4-1, 22 KO’s) in a scheduled 12 round bout at the Arena Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo León, Mexico. For Morales, this will be his first fight since he was stopped in the 4th round by WBA/WBC light welterweight champion Danny Garcia in October of 2012 in their rematch.
Morales has been sitting idle all this time and rusting away. For a fighter Morales’ age it’s not good for him to be out of the ring for as long as he’s been because there’s too much rust that can set in for the aging star.
Former WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (42-1-1, 30 KO’s) and Alfredo Angulo (22-3, 18 KO’s) have both signed for their March 8th fight a the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. The contracts were inked today and the fight is all set for Showtime pay-per-view. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is confident that it’ll be a PPV success due to the 23-year-old Canelo’s huge popularity in the U.S.
Trainer Abel Sanchez doesn’t understand why WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez (51-2-2, 28 KO’s) and WBO champion Peter Quillin (30-0, 22 KO’s) aren’t trying to fight his guy WBA champion Gennady Golovkin (28-0, 25 KO’s) to prove who the best guy is in the division. Sanchez feels that the excuses that Quillin and Sergio have been making for why they can’t fight Golovkin are pretty weak ones. He feels that they should be willing to step up and take the challenge against Golovkin rather than play it safe against other opponents.
Before Tyson Fury wasted a lot of time trying to get a fight against David Haye, he was ranked high by the WBC and within position to compete for the WBC heavyweight title. But with two fights against Haye falling through, Fury now finds himself having been dropped to No.8 by the World Boxing Council, and he’s nowhere near getting a crack at that belt. Needless to say, Fury’s not happy about it and he complained at length about it on
On New Years day former WBA welterweight champion Adrien Broner (27-1, 22 KO’s) surprised many fans by saying that he’ll win another world title belt at 147. This is kind of a shock, because Broner looked so bad in losing to Marcos Maidana last month by a 12 round unanimous decision on Showtime. So bad was the loss that many fans recommended that Broner move down in weight.
Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn is looking at potentially the end of his fighter WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns’s 3-year reign as the World Boxing Organization 135 lb. champion when he steps inside the ring to fight the unbeaten but still largely untested Terence Crawford (22-0, 16 KO’s) on March 1st at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Barring any kind of re-injury to his jaw during training, WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2-1, 11 KO’s) will be back in the ring on March 1st against his mandatory challenger from America Terence Crawford (22-0, 16 KO’s) in a fight at the Scottish Exhibition Centre, in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom. Burns is being pushed into this fight by the World Boxing Organization after they ordered the fight to take place next. Burns wanted to fight a rematch against Raymundo Beltran to clear up the mess from their fight last September that ended in a 12 round draw in Glasgow.
Amir Khan’s trainer Virgil Hunter doesn’t see anything wrong with Khan’s ability to take hard shots at all. In fact, he credits him with the ability to get up from shots that would put other fights down and unable to get up from the knockdown. For this reason, Hunter thinks that Khan is a very good option for Floyd Mayweather Jr’s next fight on May 3rd. Hunter thinks Khan will get up from pretty much any knockdown because of his recuperative powers.
Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) was hoping to cash in with a big money fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. following his upset victory over Adrien Broner earlier this month on December 14th in San Antonio, Texas. But the chances of Maidana getting a fight against Mayweather are slim at best, and he might not even get a rematch against Broner. It’s doubtful that Golden Boy Promotions will let Broner fight Maidana again unless he forces the issue against their advice for him to move on.