A great cruiserweight fight for an imaginary WBA title will thankfully air live on FS1. Shumenov (17-2, 11 KOs) is 3-0 at the weight and holds a belt rendered meaningless by Denis Lebedev’s higher version of the belt from the WBA within the same weight class. Cuban Yunier Dorticos (21-0, 20 KOs), a career cruiserweight, also won an equally meaningless WBA belt a year ago in a great fight against Youri Kalenga. Ignore the belt(s) that pretend to be on the line here, and instead consider this great matchup a number one contender fight for true WBA Champion Denis Lebedev (29-3, 22 KOs).
Even the WBA Super World Cruiserweight belt that Lebedev owns has questionable legitimacy since he lost his last fight and it wasn’t on the line to be defended, but honestly that isn’t important here. Shumenov/Dorticos is an excellent fight and the winner against Lebedev is an excellent fight as well.
Lucky for us another imaginary WBA title will be on the line in the co-feature as Peru’s Carlos Zambrano (27-0, 11 KOs) “defends” against Dominican Claudio Marrero (21-1, 15 KOs) in the featherweight division. The WBA’s actual champion here is Leo Santa Cruz, who has been ordered to defend against Abner Mares in what should be a great rematch, so again disregard any talk of belts. The winner of the two fights should be in line to fight each other in a fight or two if the WBA continues to stick to their promise of cleaning up their title pictures. Surprisingly, so far, they have been.
Zambrano started his career in the US and fought regularly here at first, but he hasn’t fought outside his native Peru since 2010 and consequently has fought no one of note. Marrero’s two most prominent fight results are a 2013 competitively scored decision loss to Jesus Cuellar and a 2015 stoppage of Rico Ramos. It is easy to instinctively favor Marrero due to his more legitimate resume, but I won’t pretend to have seen a second of a fighter having only fought in Peru. Zambrano could be great for all I know. We will find out April 29th.
