Tonight, Dirrell is going to need to stay 100% focused on hitting and getting out of the way of Bika’s fierce assaults. Dirrell cannot fight the same way by standing in front of Bika hoping he can get the better of him.
Bika showed last time that he’s the better slugger of the two, and more capable of winning those kinds of brawling fight. Dirrell had Bika hurt and on the canvas in the 5th, but he wasn’t able to repeat that in any of the remaining rounds
Fans, media, fighters and their teams gathered at the StubHub Center in Carson, California this afternoon, as the official weigh-ins for tomorrow’s Showtime Boxing tripleheader took place.
Omar Figueroa 23-0-1 (17KO) vs. Daniel Estrada 32-2-1(24KO)
Lightweight title bout
Figueroa returns to the StubHub Center, where he narrowly escaped with a controversial split decision victory over Jerry Belmontes in April. For Estrada, this is his first bout outside of his native Mexico, and easily the biggest stage he’s ever fought on. Estrada hit the scales first, weighing in at 134.5 pounds; while Figueroa came in right at the lightweight limit of 135 pounds.
Former IBF/WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan says he made an offer to WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao’s team to face him in November. Khan says his team never heard back from Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum.
Khan was later stunned to learn that Pacquiao would be fighting little known light welterweight Chris Algieri next on November 22nd in Macao, China. Khan doesn’t understand the choice of opponent, because Algieri isn’t a big name and he felt that he would have been a much better choice than Algieri.
British challenger Kell Brook (32-0, 22 KOs) is promising a knockout for Saturday night against IBF welterweight champion Shawn Porter (24-0-1, 15 KOs) when they battle it out in an important fight at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Brook weighed in 146.5 pounds at today’s weigh-in.
Brook towered over Porter during the face-off with him and seemed to have lost the nervousness that he initially had during their final press conference on Thursday. Porter weighed in at 146.75.
The fight is important because the winner of the Brook-Porter fight can move forward to potential bigger fights in the future against the likes of Amir Khan and Floyd Mayweather Jr. The loser will need to start over and try and rebuild their career.
It looks like WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs) won’t be getting the big fight that he and his promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions were hoping for in his next fight in October.
WBC interim 160 pound champion Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KOs) is saying that he’ll be fighting Golovokin next on October 18th.
“Since Miguel Cotto didn’t want to fight me, we’re fighting GGGboxing [Golovkin] October 18. I never back down from anyone. The battle is coming,” Rubio said.
Rubio has power but he’s not someone that will challenge Golovkin in any way. I rate Rubio below Curtis Stevens, a fighter that Golovkin recently stopped in 8 round.
#1 WBC Deontay Wilder thinks that 42-year-old Shannon Briggs (55-6-1, 48 KOs) is wasting his time following IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko around trying to get a fight with him by getting into confrontations with him at his gym, in restaurants and at press conferences.
It didn’t take long for Ruslan Provodnikov to make a name for himself in the sport of boxing. Over the years he has chiseled an image for himself, one of a champion with a granite chin, unstoppable stamina and a burning heart.
When crossing the ropes, Provodnikov is expected to throw an unbelievable volume of punches, while his opponent across the ring, knowing this, prepares for a long and painful night; war,
Nevertheless, Provodnikov is as humble as professional fighters get. In a recent interview, Ruslan admitted that he knows very little when it comes to boxing, and is always hungry and open for more knowledge.
Brook, 28, has spent 10 years of his long career building up to this moment and now it’s his time to show whether he belongs at the world level or if he’s just another fighter with inflated record courtesy of long years of weak match-making to keep him unbeaten.
Brook says he’s willing to do anything he has to try and win. Well, he may indeed need to do that on Saturday night if he discovers that boxing Porter from the outside is a fail. In that case, Brook will need to mix it up with Porter to try and out-slug him. Brook looked horrible in one fight in his career where opponent forced his way to the inside and exposed him in his first bout against Carson Jones.
The recent uproar regarding world champions Lamont Peterson and Danny Garcia’s recent opponents has sparked a large amount of friction between the promoters, fighters, journalists and fans.
Fans, and journalists, who must be considered the most dedicated versions of fans, have displayed their frustrations with the recent choices of opponents for the top fighters in the sport. Generally speaking of course, those watching and writing about the sport are expecting to see the best fight the best, or seeing the best fight those that could be the best.
49-year-old Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs) has surprised a lot of boxing fans by being able to come back from a 12 round decision loss to Chad Dawson in 2012 and turning things around by winning his last three fights against Tavoris Cloud, Karo Murat and Beibut Shumenov.
Hopkins was seen as nearing the end of his career when Dawson beat him, but Hopkins has definitely turns things around with his last three wins. While it was nice that Hopkins beat Cloud, Murat and Shumenov, the wins were still largely shallow ones given how vulnerable all three of those fighters were.