By Alexey Sukachev
It looks like the WBO middleweight championship between reigning beltholder Dmitry Pirog (18-0, 14 KOs) and his obligatory challenger Gennady Martirosyan (22-2, 11 KOs), the first ever collision between two Russian pugilists in the history of boxing, will be moved one day behind the originally scheduled date. The fight will most probably take its place on September 25 (not on September 24 as was reported before) in the same city of Krasnodar.
“We still don’t know the date”, reflected Martirosyan’s head coach Vladimir Vidov several days ago in his short conversation with the official portal of the professional boxing federation of Russia. “Gennady has never seen an actual contract, so we just hope promoters won’t move the date considerably as we should re-evaluate an entire scheme of preparations in this case”.
The fight will be televised live by Russia Two boxing channel.
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Russian boxing community has suffered a hard blow recently. Artem Lavrov, a legendary Soviet boxing coach, has passed away at 78 years of age. Lavrov has guided Shamil Sabirov to the 1980 Moscow Olympics gold medal in the light flyweight division. For about eight years since then he had been training the Soviet amateur boxing team and then relocated himself to Turkey, helping the local national squad to become one of the finest across Europe. He then came back home and helped several well-known Russian prizefighters, including Dmitry Pirog and WBO #1 cruiserweight Denis Lebedev, to achieve a high level of boxing skills.
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Two quality boxing events will be held this weekend in Southern Russian with just one day apart.
On Friday night, well-known (locally) promoters Kirill Pchelnikov and Vitaly Supichenko will unify their efforts to stage a nice-packed little show in Nazran, Ingushetia. There reportedly will be two debated WBC Baltic titles at stake – one for the reigning titleholder and local featherweight star Ayup Arsaev (11-0, 7 KOs) and one vacant for Russia-based Armenian slugger Karen Tevosyan (18-3-3, 9 KOs). Opponents for both fighters are still to be chosen. Supporting the action at local palace of sports will be two more Russian contenders – comebacking Akhmed Oligov (22-7-1, 5 KOs) and WBC #9 light heavyweight Roman Simakov (17-1-1, 8 KOs) in separate fights. Several more prospects will also be added to the show.
One day later in infamous local village of Kuschevskaya, Krasnodar Region, Russian welterweight champion David Avanesyan (8-1, 2 KOs) will hunt for the vacant interim WBC Youth 147lb title, for what it’s worth, against Kenyan trialhorse Samuel Kamau (12-4-1, 11 KOs). Also on the card is undefeated Kazakh hopeful Aset Aysin (6-0, 3 KOs) who is scheduled to test fellow unbeaten Artur Vakilov (3-0, 2 KOs) over six. Several more contest will also be added. Sergey Kostenko promotes this show.
