Saturday night HBO Latino airs a two fight card that we probably shouldn’t waste our time with. We will though because we are addicts with a problem. The card features former Andre Ward challenger Sullivan Barrera (18-1, 13 KOs) in soft against Paul Parker (8-1, 4 KOs) of Ohio. That is the main event. If I somehow haven’t lost you yet, click “Read more…” fellow masochists!
Sometimes I hate my dedication to previewing at least the main event of every single even slightly prominent TV card. I really do. Here goes.
Sullivan Barrera is 35 now. He is a good light heavyweight, ranked #9 Ring Magazine from and has that great Cuban amateur background. He first gained real notice in the professional ranks with a 2015 TKO4 over the shell of Jeff Lacy that occasionally still trots out. Two fights later he handed a competent but not great former Bernard Hopkins challenger Karo Murat his third loss with a KO5. That led him to a fight with Andre Ward where he was soundly outclassed on HBO. In his return (in a NOT terrible HBO Latino card), Barrera met unbeaten Ukrainian prospect Vyacheslav Shabranskyy. Shabranskyy had a quality win under his belt against another Cuban light heavyweight contender in Yunieski Gonzales, so it was quite impressive when Barrera smashed him out in seven in a very exciting fight. Barerra dropped his opponent three times along the way and was down once in the second. It is a great win, one that should launch the Cuban contender back into a prominent fight.
Instead, he gets Paul Parker. an 8-1 non-contender or prospect who himself was stopped in three by Vyacheslav Shabranskyy two fights ago. He has only been past four once which was in his most recent fight, an eight round split decision win over 18-4 club fighter Lionell Thompson. Look, I have no problem with a fighter like Barrera taking a stay busy fight with a fighter like Parker. They both get paid, Parker gets a shot at glory, and Barrera gets to work on some thing against live competition. I just don’t understand why it is on any channel at all. This is a terrible TV main event for Bounce TV, for Estrella TV, for AWE. Now it is on HBO Latino.
The televised undercard features something kind of interesting in Vaughn Alexander (7-0, 5 KOs), the older brother of Devon who first turned pro in 2004. He was considered a blue chip welterweight prospect and was under the promotional guidance of a then still relevant Don King. Unfortunately, at 19, he was convicted of armed robbery and assault. After 11 years in prison, he returned to the ring as a middleweight late 2016. He gets some exposure here against in his third fight back journeyman Andres Rey (7-5, 5 KOs). Despite my minor interest in seeing how Alexander looks at this point, this fight is still massively under the standards of anything except maybe a PBC on FS1 swing bout or something comparable. In fairness, this wasn’t supposed to be the co-feature and was a last second bump up, but it is still a 7-0 fighter versus a 7-5 fighter on an HBO branded network as the undercard of a really bad fight.
But you know we are still watching. We are the worst.
