By Ryan Maquiñana
After Beibut Shumenov made the fourth successful defense of his WBA light heavyweight crown Saturday, his promoter Don Chargin was already pondering the Kazakhstan native’s next move.
“This week alone, I’ve been approached with three different offers about making a fight with Beibut,” Chargin told BoxingScene.com. “Golden Boy has asked me about Beibut fighting Bernard Hopkins in Brooklyn at the new arena, [WBO titleholder Nathan] Cleverly’s team has called me a couple times this week to go to Wales, and even [Mikkel] Kessler’s people inquired about us to go to Denmark.”
While neither Hopkins or Cleverly have announced their upcoming plans in detail, it has been widely publicized that Kessler is in negotiations for a rematch with new IBF super middleweight boss Carl Froch. Shumenov (13-1, 8 KOs) shut out Enrique Ornelas (33-8, 21 KOs) at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas and will be ready for the fall if necessary.
“Beibut went into the fight with a very bad arm and he overcame it,” Chargin said. “Ornelas is a tough guy, but Beibut shut him out.”
Former 175-pound champ Jean Pascal of Canada was ringside for Shumenov’s win last July over Danny Santiago and publicly called him out. Chargin was asked about a winter fight with Pascal, who is challenging Tavoris Cloud for the IBF light heavyweight title on Aug. 11 in Montreal.
“They’ve offered the Pascal fight, but that was in the past and he’s fighting Cloud. The other three offers took place this week,” Chargin said.
Ryan Maquiñana writes a weekly boxing column for CSNBayArea.com. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Ratings Panel for Ring Magazine. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at Norcalboxing.net, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.
