By Keith Idec
Sadam Ali will return to the ring April 19 against Jeremy Bryan on the Bernard Hopkins-Beibut Shumenov undercard at Washington’s D.C. Armory.
The Ali-Bryan bout, contracted for 10 rounds at 147 pounds, will be broadcast by SHO Extreme, just before the start of Showtime’s 9 p.m. tripleheader that’ll feature the Hopkins-Shumenov light heavyweight championship unification fight in its main event.
Brooklyn’s Ali, a 2008 Olympian, is 18-0, including 11 knockouts, yet has been matched pretty carefully throughout his five-year pro career. Ali, 25, stopped Mexico’s Jesus Selig (16-2-1, 10 KOs) in the sixth round of his last fight Dec. 7 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
The 28-year-old Bryan (17-3, 7 KOs), a two-time national Golden Gloves champion from Paterson, N.J., defeated the Bronx’s Issouf Kinda (16-2, 6 KOs) by unanimous decision in his last outing, an eight-round junior welterweight fight Feb. 14 in Huntington, N.Y. Bryan bounced back against Kinda from a one-punch, second-round knockout defeat in his previous fight to heavy-handed Amir Imam (13-0, 12 KOs), of Albany, N.Y. Bryan’s loss last April 12 in Las Vegas to Imam was his third by knockout or technical knockout as a pro.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
