Demetrius Andrade in Line For 154 Titles With Banner/SHO Deal
By Steve Kim
This weekend former WBO junior welterweight world champion Ruslan Provodnikov makes his debut on Showtime versus John Molina. 'the Siberian Rocky' is the best known client that Banner Promotions has and Artie Pelullo believes it will lead to other opportunities for his boxers on the network.
"It helps them because now Showtime is also in the junior middleweight division," Pelullo said a couple of weeks ago at a media day at the Fortune Gym in Hollywood, California.
One of his other top clients is undefeated junior middleweight contender Demetrius Andrade (22-0, 15KOs), and three of the four major champions at 154-pounds are fighting on Showtime.
On May 21st, Showtime featured a triple-header that saw Erislandy Lara retain his WBA/IBO belts, Jermell Charlo capture the WBC title, and twin brother Jermall Charlo retain his IBF strap.
There is no chance of Lara and Jermall facing each other, as they are both trained by Ronnie Shields. Jermall is never fighting his twin, and he's also close friends with Lara from their years of training side by side under Shields. That entire chain creates a big window of opportunity for Andrade to fight any of the three.
"Last week they had three junior middleweight title fights and now Demetrius Andrade is in the co-feature, Willie Nelson's a tough guy. But after that there are three world titles on that network that we believe because of Ruslan being on the same show should get a good rating," Pellulo said.
"(Demetrius) can now fight one of those guys for one of those world titles and hopefully he'll unify. The plan is with Showtime to unify all the titles."
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
