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By Cliff Rold - This is a bad weekend for boxing, on paper, if the weekend is measured only by the card set to air Saturday night on Showtime.
It gets better if one looks elsewhere.
Specifically, look south.
On Saturday night in Mexico, to very little acclaim in the US, we get the fight of the week. For those with access to BeIn Espanol (11 PM EST) in their cable packages, with portions of the card expected to air on Azteca America (10 PM EST), a unification battle in boxing’s smallest division might end up being one of the best fights of the year.
Japan’s Katsunari Takayama (27-6, 10 KO), the current IBF titlist at 105 lbs. and a former WBC titlist at the same weight, squares off with Mexico’s Francisco Rodriguez Jr. (14-2, 10 KO), the current WBO beltholder.
They don’t fight in a division particularly followed in the US. Neither man graces any pound for pound lists or is any sort of household name. Even in their own countries, their fame lags well behind some of their more notable brethren.
That has nothing to do with what will occur in the ring.
Both have been in good fights before and they match up in a way that says leather will fly. It is only the fifth unification fight since the division’s birth in 1987. Three of them featured Ricardo Lopez in the 1990s and one of those, the second with Rosendo Alvarez, could technically be considered non-unification as Alvarez lost his belt on the scales prior to the fight. The other, Kazuto Ioka-Akira Yaegashi, took place in 2012. [Click Here To Read More]
It gets better if one looks elsewhere.
Specifically, look south.
On Saturday night in Mexico, to very little acclaim in the US, we get the fight of the week. For those with access to BeIn Espanol (11 PM EST) in their cable packages, with portions of the card expected to air on Azteca America (10 PM EST), a unification battle in boxing’s smallest division might end up being one of the best fights of the year.
Japan’s Katsunari Takayama (27-6, 10 KO), the current IBF titlist at 105 lbs. and a former WBC titlist at the same weight, squares off with Mexico’s Francisco Rodriguez Jr. (14-2, 10 KO), the current WBO beltholder.
They don’t fight in a division particularly followed in the US. Neither man graces any pound for pound lists or is any sort of household name. Even in their own countries, their fame lags well behind some of their more notable brethren.
That has nothing to do with what will occur in the ring.
Both have been in good fights before and they match up in a way that says leather will fly. It is only the fifth unification fight since the division’s birth in 1987. Three of them featured Ricardo Lopez in the 1990s and one of those, the second with Rosendo Alvarez, could technically be considered non-unification as Alvarez lost his belt on the scales prior to the fight. The other, Kazuto Ioka-Akira Yaegashi, took place in 2012. [Click Here To Read More]
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