Photo: SRLBoxing.com

By Jim De Pierro

Joe Mesi 23-0 (21 KOs) vs. David Izon 27-4 (23 KOs)

17.10 - Baby Joe Mesi, is he the great white hope or just another dope? Most people who seem to venture an opinion on Mesi see him as another cream puff waiting to get exposed. As far as I am concerned the jury is still out on whether Mesi has got the goods or not. I don’t see any major flaws in any of Mesi’s performances to date. He has won every round of every fight in the few fights that I have seen him in. To my knowledge he has never been in any serious trouble or even knocked down at any point in his professional career despite being in the ring with Bert Cooper and Jorge Luis Gonzales who are at the very least good bangers. A common criticism of Mesi is that he has poor defense and gets hit too much. I will admit there is certainly room for improvement as far as Mesi’s defense goes but I think you have to take into account that McKnight and Griffis didn’t pose any serious threat to Mesi as both are relatively weak punchers. If you’re an aggressive type of fighter like Mesi and you feel your opponent can’t seriously hurt you it makes sense to eat a few jabs take care of business and go home early. Joe Mesi sounds like he is pretty intelligent and I suspect if he were to fight someone who can punch and has a decent amount of skills he would be a little tighter with his defense. David Izon fits the bill in that Izon does have some skills and can punch some.

Make no mistake about it, David Izon is a shot fighter. If Mesi wins as he most likely will this fight will not turn Mesi into a top echelon fighter in my eyes. I do think Izon has more left in the tank than he showed against Oquendo. There were several factors that contributed to Izon’s poor performance against Oquendo. Izon had been inactive for more than a year going into the Oquendo bout. Izon must be one of the most unlucky boxers ever because during that time frame he had fights with Rahman (when he was champ), Tyson and the Klitschko brothers and a fight with Tommy Martin all fall through. Even after the loss to Oquendo Izon’s bad luck continued as he was scheduled to fight Mount Whitaker then campaigning under the name of Goofi. For whatever reason, I heard that Izon pulled out of the fight for money reasons, the fight did not go through and Goofi Whitaker came in at 281 lbs. and barely eaked out a draw against last minute replacement and journeyman fighter Ray Austin. The fact that Whitaker/Goofi came in at 281 lbs. that night for when his original opponent was to be Izon says that he didn’t take Izon seriously. Had Izon showed up that night he would have beaten Whitaker that night IMO because Goofi Whitaker was more out of shape than David Izon was shot.

Training for all those fights and having every one of those fights fall through probably took a mental toll on Izon. The fight with Oquendo was taken on short notice which means Izon didn’t have the necessary time to prepare an effective game plan for fighting Oquendo. Izon, if he is going to be victorious needs to have someone in front of him who is going to stand there and fight in the trenches with him. A guy like Oquendo who is going to use a lot of lateral movement is going to give Izon fits. Mesi is more likely to stand toe to toe with Izon than Oquendo which should make it easier for Izon to get some shots in.

I personally felt the stoppage in the Oquendo-Izon fight was a bit premature because Izon has shown on past occasions an ability to whether the storm and stop his opponents late as Derrick Jefferson learned the hard way. Izon I always recall being somewhat of a slow starter. With all that being said I could understand why the referee stopped the fight when he did because Izon was taking about 5 or 6 punches for everyone he landed on Oquendo for three rounds. The only good thing for Izon that came out of his last performance was that he wasn’t seriously beaten up by Oquendo and shouldn’t suffer any adverse affects at least physically as a result of that loss.

In an interview with fightnews.com Izon says that he is going to use the first round to study Mesi’s mistakes and make him pay for it later on. Whatever Izon has left I think we are going to see it against Mesi. I think Izon will have one or two good rounds and put Mesi in some trouble but Baby Joe’s high work rate is eventually going to prompt the ref to stop the fight in what will be a very one sided contest. My guess is that this will be the last time Izon fights.

Joe Mesi TKO 9 over David Izon

Diobelys Hurtado 35-2-1 (23 KOs) vs. Vivian Harris 21-1-1 (15 KOs)

Photo: Tom Casino/Showtime

This is a tough fight to predict but I have to go with Hurtado in this one. I think Hurtado does everything Harris can do but a little bit better. I think the fact that Hurtado has been in with the likes of Pernell Whitaker and Kostya Tszyu should serve him well. I can’t see Harris showing Hurtado anything he hasn’t faced before.

A Harris victory is not out of the question but I would consider it a minor upset if Harris emerged the winner of this fight. Harris only loss to date was to Ray Oliviera in a fight where Oliviera was able to put his experience to use in schooling the young prospect. The only other blemish on Harris’s record is a ten round draw with Ivan Robinson. For those of you who have never seen Harris-Robinson fight, Harris was the victim of a bizarre scoring system called majority scoring. How the rules worked in that particular fight was that the three judges scorecards were tabulated for each round but their was only one master scorecard. So if two judges scored the round 10-9 for Harris and the third gave it to Robinson 10-9 a consensus score of 10-9 for Harris would be the official score that would go on the scorecard. The draw result can’t even really be blamed on crooked or incompetent judges because all three judges had Harris winning the fight on their individual scorecards. Under normal rules the result would have gone into the record books as a unanimous decision for Harris. All three judges had Harris winning the fight but they each got there in a different way. The net result was an electoral college type of effect where the popular vote was clearly won by one candidate but under the rules is not the official winner of the contest. You might even say Harris got Gored out of a decision because of a Bu**sh** system that was in place.

I think Harris is a good fighter but Hurtado is a better fighter. I expect Hurtado to slowly break down Harris in a close fight and stop Harris in the later rounds.

Diobelys Hurtado TKO 12 over Vivian Harris

Agree? Disagree? Think I’m full of it? E-mail me a jdepierro@adelphia.net and tell me what you think.