MONTREAL – Sanctioning body politics are one thing, but in order to get a big fight – like the kind of opportunity that could come against the winner of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Terence Crawford – you have to make big statements. Whether Osleys Iglesias made a big enough statement to build interest in that level of opportunity next is up to interpretation, but the 27-year-old Germany-based Cuban put himself in good position with his eighth-round stoppage victory over Vladimir Shishkin on Thursday night at Casino Montreal.
Iglesias, 14-0 (13 KOs), knocked Shishkin’s head back with a left hand in the eighth round, sending Shishkin into the ropes before a follow-up flurry compelled the referee to halt the bout at the 1-minute, 28-second mark.
With the win, Iglesias elevated to the No. 1 ranking with the IBF at 168lbs, setting him up to potentially become the mandatory challenger for one of the four belts that undisputed champion Alvarez and Crawford will fight for on September 13 in Las Vegas.
The win was Iglesias’ biggest to date, stretching his knockout streak to eight.
Iglesias feels he showed that he deserved an opportunity with the winner of that super-fight.
“I think I made a statement. If he doesn’t want to fight with me, it’s not because I don’t give a good show. It’s because he’s scared. I’m a young boxer, I’m hungry, I have a good punch,” said Iglesias, adding that he’s “97 percent sure” that Alvarez beats Crawford.
“If he doesn’t want to fight with me, it’s because he might be scared that I’m too young and too strong for him.”
The loss is the first by stoppage for Shishkin, 16-2 (10 KOs), whose only previous defeat was a close decision loss to William Scull last October for the vacant IBF world title.
With the win, Eye of the Tiger – which promotes Iglesias and WBC interim titleholder Christian Mbilli – now has two paths to securing a major fight with their boxers and the Alvarez-Crawford winner.
Promoter Camille Estephan says that, while Iglesias won’t be in Las Vegas to watch the fight, he says they will not remain idle waiting for a call from the Alvarez-Crawford winner.
“What happens next is we’re gonna keep knocking them out,” said Estephan. “What I was very happy with is that he kept his power. People had questions, does he have power only in the first few rounds? He kept his power, he was hurting him. I wanted the fight to stop because I was worried [for Shishkin].”
Iglesias, who had gone the distance just once, in 2012 against Isaac Chilemba, looked poised to score another early knockout after rocking the 34-year-old Shishkin multiple times in the first round, particularly with the right hook. The Russia born, Florida based Shishkin remained composed, and adjusted in the second round by firing his jab more, if only to stop Iglesias from running him over. Iglesias still got the better of the round, landing a hard left near the bell.
Shishkin, whose resume includes wins over former titleholder Jose Uzcategui and title challenger Sena Agbeko, remained game throughout, landing right hands to keep Iglesias thinking. A pattern began to play out, wherein Iglesias would test whether Shishkin was ready to go, and then settle back in to boxing afterwards. By the sixth round, Iglesias began to appear marked up around the eyes, a sign that he had been in a real fight, which, given his penchant for early knockouts, hasn’t always been the case since turning pro in 2019.
Shishkin, for his part, was beginning to swell up as well, and a cut that opened up under his right eye in the seventh round underlined the damage he was absorbing. Shishkin’s poker face began to crack in the eighth round, when a left hand knocked Shishkin’s head back and forced him to the ropes. Iglesias pursued Shishkin to the ropes, missing some but landing enough to keep Shishkin in a defensive posture before the fight was stopped.
Iglesias, who now lives near Berlin, Germany, is trained by Georg Bramowski. He defected from Cuba in 2019 after winning gold at the World Boxing Cup amateur tournament in Cologne, Germany. The fight was the longest for Iglesias since his tenth round stoppage of Andrii Velikovskyi in Poland in December of 2022.
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.
