Fans are saying that Xander Zayas might as well turn over his WBO junior middleweight title to Sebastian Fundora if he chooses to fight him next. He’s not good enough to defeat ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora. The offensive tools that Sebastian has would be too much for Zayas (22-0, 13 KOs).
Xander Zayas: Power Concerns
With the way Zayas looked in his 12-round unanimous decision win over Jorge Garcia (33-5, 26 KOs) last Saturday night, he’d even lose to Tim Tszyu. He lacks the power to hurt Tszyu, and wouldn’t be able to hold him off by moving and clinching.
Top Rank’s matchmakers have a big decision to make for Xander’s next fight. They’re likely hoping that Turki Alalshikh will take an interest in him and offer him a massive amount of money to fight someone like Fundora or someone beatable, like Josh Kelly.
Murtazaliev: Zayas’s Nightmare
What would be a nightmare for Top Rank is if Turki wanted Zayas to fight IBF 154-lb champion Bakhram Murtazaliev. Not only would Xander likely lose, but he would be destroyed in a way that his market value would plummet, causing his fans to abandon him, realizing that the hype had fooled them.
“You guys have seen my growth. You guys have seen the elevation in my game every time. I made the adjustment every time it needed to be done, and today, it wasn’t the exception,” said Xander Zayas to the media after capturing the vacant WBO junior middleweight title by beating Jorge Garcia.
Xander doesn’t look any different from the way he was three years ago. The only thing that’s changed is that he’s aged, put on size, but still has no power and moves frequently. He turned his fight with Garcia into a Tom and Jerry fight. It wasn’t an entertaining fight to watch due to the movement and holding Zayas did.
“Today, I had a tough opponent in Jorge Garcia Perez. I came forward. We knew he was coming to fight. We needed to keep him at a distance, and that’s what we did. We frustrated him,” said Zayas.
Referee’s Lenient Officiating
What Zayas isn’t saying is that he used excessive holding and moving to frustrate Garcia. The referee Eric Dali took a casual, hands-off approach to officiating the fight, allowing Xander to use frequent clinching to neutralize Garcia’s offense. There should have been warnings and points taken off from Zayas because he went overboard with the amount of clinching that he used.
