Though fight fans would very much like to see a light-heavyweight unification showdown between Andre Ward, recent KO winner over Sergey Kovalev, and Adonis Stevenson, the WBC king, it doesn’t look like happening. Not this year anyway.
Yvon Michel, Stevenson’s promoter, told Radio Canada that Ward “never rushes his decisions,” and that after his win over Kovalev, he “spoke of the possibility of going to cruiserweight or heavyweight.”
In sad news from Canada, top referee Marlon B. Wright died on Friday (July 7), having lost his battle with skin cancer. Wright, born in Jamaica but relocating to Montreal, Canada at a young age, was just 51 years old.
Over his refereeing career, Wright worked a number of big fights, including bouts featuring world champions such as Lucian Bute, Gennady Golovkin, David Lemieux and Kell Brook. Tributes from fighters like Bute, Lemieux and light-heavyweight champ Adonis Stevenson have been coming in.
WBA cruiserweight title holder Denis Lebedev (30-2, 22 KOs) got back on the winning track tonight in beating Australian Mark Flanagan (22-4, 15 Kos) in defeating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision on Sunday night in front of a big crowd at the DIVS in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
In a genuine bad blood match-up that had been preceded by plenty of trash-talk and a near brawl at the weigh-in, unbeaten 140 pounders Josh Taylor and Ohara Davies engaged in a battle that lived up to the hype last night.
Taylor, 9-0 going in, proved too tough, too clever and too good for Davies, 15-0 going in. The fight in Glasgow, Taylor’s home town, was eventful though. Southpaw Taylor, seen by many as a definite world champion of the future, decked the cocky, arrogant Davies in the 3rd, and it looked for a time as though the fight would end quickly.
Last night on Frank Warren’s show at The Copperbox in London, red-hot heavyweight prospect Daniel Dubois advanced to 4-0 as a pro with a ludicrously easy second round stoppage of late replacement foe Mauricio Barragan of Uruguay.
Dubois, still only 19 years old, flattened Barragan in the 2nd with a body shot, halting the much smaller man at the 1:41 mark of round two. Dubois picked up the WBC heavyweight Youth title with the predictable win.
Cruiserweight:
Oleksandr Usyk vs. Marco Huck
Murat Gassiev vs. Krzysztof Wlodarczyk
Mairis Briedis vs. Mike Perez
Yunier Dorticos vs. Dmitry Kudryashov
Super Middleweight:
George Groves vs. Jamie Cox
Callum Smith vs. Erik Skoglund
Eubank/Abraham winner vs. Avni Yildirim
Juergen Braehmer vs. Rob Brant
By: Lou McLaughlin – Darren” Checkmate” Maciunski was a former top level super welterweight contender in the 1990’s. He fought from 1992 through 2002. Interestingly, he got his fighting nickname “Checkmate” from having been an avid chess player as a young teenager and compares boxing to a chess match. He finished his career on a win against Leo Edwards and a record of 20 -8 in 2003. His record does not adequately describe his career. He had 40 amateur bouts before turning pro and fought many of the major names of that era including Kevin Kelly and Fernando Vargas. He had wins over vastly more experienced boxing luminaries veterans Meldrick Taylor then 34-3- 1 and James McGirt 73-4-1. He fought on major televised networks including HBO, USA’s Tuesday Night Fights, and ESPN. His career took him to Australia, Denmark, and Italy.
There are plenty of fans who are critical of the upcoming, fast-approaching Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor “Super Fight;” with plenty of these same fans declaring how they will boycott the August event buy not paying for it. Fair enough, if the crossover bout is not your thing, but will a good number of fans find themselves getting pulled in by a stellar under-card?
Going into the biggest, or arguably second-biggest, fight of his career, Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez is still being asked about his solitary career defeat. It is the Floyd Mayweather loss of 2013 – the one fight of Canelo’s that was a bigger deal, certainly financially, than Canelo’s upcoming battle with Gennady Golovkin – that reporters still ask the 26 year old about.
Peter Fury, trainer of course of unbeaten former heavyweight champ Tyson Fury, says his charge is “in a good place right now,” and that at around 24 stone (approx 336 pounds) he has lost a bit of weight. Speaking on The Bunce Boxing Hour, Peter said that Tyson is sparring to get in shape, not using bags or jumping rope.
Sparring, ten, 15, 20 rounds, three times a week, Fury is slowly shedding the bulk he put on during his layoff. As regards to his impending ring return, Peter said that right now their legal team is working on overturning the suspension Tyson was hit with some months back, and that “if” this is successful, the plan is for Fury to return on the September 23rd bill that will see Hughie Fury challenge WBO heavyweight champ Joseph Parker in Manchester.