England’s BT Sport and Box Nation both feature British middleweight prospect Tommy Langford (18-0, 6 KOs) taking a big step up against contender Avtandil Khurtsidze (32-2-2, 16 KOs) in Leicester this Saturday. The fight has quite high stakes as the winner receives potential matchup with WBO titlist Billy Joe Saunders and the loser will experience a pretty sizable career setback. As with any Khurtsidze fight, this also could be a good action fight as well.
The most interesting of the three reasonably significant fights in Europe this Saturday is Langford and Khurtsidze. Full disclosure though, the Georgian (country) born fighter became one of my favorites in March of last year when he upset hot prospect Antoine Douglas on Showtime. His performance was an incredible display of heart as he just threw every punch possible from his diminutive 5’4″ middleweight frame. The seemingly impossible work rate would exhaust him at times and the punches would become flailing, near harmless arm punches, but he never stopped and would always find his second wind. In a big upset, he stopped Douglas in the tenth after what had become a sustained beating.
The finish wasn’t the cherry on top, however. Instead it was an amazing moment before the final round in which Khurtsidze’s trainer brings up Mike Tyson as inspiration to find a finish. This prompted his fighter to scream “I LIKE MIKE TYSON! I LIKE!” very passionately in the corner. It was one of my favorite, ridiculous boxing moments of 2016. Here is the video:
With that said, Advantil doesn’t have a deep resume beyond this fight. We can’t even rule out that maybe Douglas himself was a prospect that we had read wrong and therefore isn’t a notable win at all. The other well known name on Khurtsidze’s resume is a competitively scored 2010 loss to Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam in France back when N’Jikam was an unbeaten prospect. Otherwise he has just bashed around journeymen like Ossie Duran and Dionisio Miranda.
The question is whether unbeaten British middleweight champion Tommy Langford is one of these journeymen in the making, or a higher level opponent. What we can be confident about is the reality that Langford will possess very important physical advantages. He will walk into the ring Saturday with extreme height and reach advantages, but then again every Khurtsidze opponent does. Many top bantamweights would have these advantages over Khurtsidze 42 pounds south of the middleweight limit. He truly is an aberration at 160.
Now just because the Georgian is used to fighting with tremendous height and reach disparities does not mean that they are nullified. On top of the natural disadvantages, Khurtsidze fought squared up a lot against Douglas as well. This generally limits a fighter’s ability to cover range, something of the utmost importance for a 5’4″ middleweight. His inexperienced prospect of an opponent was just unable to take advantage of this by consistently use a jab and lateral movement to keep his opponent away. Tommy Langford is no more experienced than Douglas was, but the same opportunities will be there. This may be easier said than done come fight night against the level of intense pressure that Khurtsidze brings, especially with the limited power Langford has shown, but a really good boxer should be capable of keeping him at bay for long stretches.
This fight is for an interim version of the belt Billy Joe Saunders holds. You can safely ignore this as it is not a real world title, but the winner will be in line to fight him as a mandatory challenger which is the only reason I bring it up at all.
The co-feature on this card is a British super lightweight title fight with Tyrone Nurse (34-2-1, 7 KOs) defending his regional belt against Joe Hughes (15-2, 6 KOs). This is a good British level bout with Nurse in particular being on a strong run with three consecutive wins over Chris Jenkins, Willie Limond, and Tommy Coyle. Hughes put in a respectable showing two shows ago against known potential higher level prospect Jack Catterall, losing on competitive cards. Heavyweight prospect Daniel Dubois makes his second pro appearance on this card as well.
