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On the night of April 22nd at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, Oscar Valdez defeated the tough Miguel Marriaga. For the first time in his career, the defending WBO featherweight champion not only went the twelve round distance, but he also showed that he could dig down deep when needed.
While it's Mike Alvarado who is the main event performer and Michael Conlan the real headliner for the card that's taking place in Chicago on Friday night at the UIC Pavilion, two other Top Rank prospects, Egis Kavaliauskas and Alex Saucedo, are also worth mentioning.
As of this moment it's not clear just where WBO flyweight titlist, Zou Shiming's career is heading. For the time being it seems like he's having some promotional issues. From the very beginning of Shiming's career (after winning two Olympic gold medals) and with his popularity in China, began to make inroads in the Asian market, having him perform mostly in Macao.
Most everyone watching this past weekend's middleweight contest between Ryota Murata and Hassan N'dam from Toyko believed that Murata had clearly done enough to get his hands raised in victory after twelve rounds. The Japanese fighter had controlled much of the action after a competitive start to the fight and scored a knockdown in the fourth frame. Not only that he was fighting on his home turf.
BoxingScene.com has been advised that a light heavyweight bout between Dmitry Bivol and Cedric Agnew has been added to the pay-per-view undercard on June 17th that is headline by the rematch between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev. Bivol (10-0, 8 KO's), who is being moved quickly, fought on April 14th where he blew out Samuel Clarkson in four rounds for the interim WBA light heavyweight title.
While many are calling for an immediate rematch between Hassan N'dam and Ryota Murata, in the wake of the highly debated and controversial decision given to N'dam this past weekend in Tokyo, Japan for a version of the WBA title - the fact is that Rob Brant is the mandatory challenger.
Coming off his March 18th defeat of Bryant Cruz at the Madison Square Garden in New York, young lightweight contender Ryan Martin has gotten back to work. To both prepare himself and others for upcoming bouts, Martin arrived in Big Bear yesterday to help Denis Shafikov prepare for IBF lightweight titlist, Robert Easter.
A couple of months ago, Sullivan Barrera and Artur Beterbiev looked to be on a collision course in what would be an IBF elimination bout. A purse bid was held and eventually won by GYM (which is headed up by Yvon Michel and represents Beterbiev) but that fight never materialized as Barrera had concerns about everything from the fight contract to the date and venue of the fight.
In the most shocking incident of a busy boxing weekend - Leon Lawson Jr., the trainer and uncle of Andre Dirrell, attacked Jose Uzcategui after the bizarre conclusion to his nephew's fight. The trainer is now wanted on assault charges. The incident was caught by Showtime during their broadcast on Saturday night from the MGM Grand National in Oxon Hill, Maryland.
The last time Joe Smith (23-1, 19 KOs) was in the ring, he was capping off a banner 2016 by literally knocking Bernard Hopkins out of the ring at the Forum near Los Angeles on December 17th, scoring an eighth round stoppage. Earlier that year he had scored a shocking first round KO of heavily favored Andrzej Fonfara. It was formally announced on Wednesday that Smith would be facing Sullivan Barrera (19-1, 14 KOs) on July 15th at the Forum as part of a 'Boxing After Dark' broadcast on HBO.