Showtime dropped a complete schedule of its upcoming fights today in its announcement that it will be airing the Anthony Joshua fight live. I reported that and most of the fights a while back, but what is new is that the Gary Russell Jr (27-1, 16 KOs) versus Oscar Escandon (25-2, 17 KOs) May 20th fight card is now a tripleheader featuring a new opener in former two division titlist Rances Barthelemy (25-0, 13 KOs) moving up to junior welterweight in a title eliminator against Kiryl Relikh (21-1, 19 KOs).
Former Cuban amateur standout Rances Barthelemy won his first world title in 2014 in his second try against Argenis Mendez. In their first encounter Barthelemy stopped Mendez at the very end of the second round, but the punch was ruled to have been after the bell and the fight a no contest. He won it later in the year by wide scores despite losing two points for low blows and then defended it once before moving up to lightweight.
At the very end of 2015 Barthelemy picked up a vacant lightweight belt in a very close fight with Russian Denis Shafikov. He defended it once against Mickey Bey and is now moving up again. It should be noted that between his stints at 130 and 135, he did take a fight at 140 against Antonio DeMarco and won wide on points. This is the weight he will be fighting at against Relikh.
Belarusian Kyril Relikh is less of a known commodity. He really has had only one fight on a major stage, a narrow defeat to Ricky Burns in a title shot last October. That fight was a toss up and with different judges Relikh may already be a titlist. The winner of the fight will become the mandatory challenger for Julius Indongo’s new WBC belt.
As stated earlier, the main event of this card will be Gary Russell Jr versus Russell Escandon. The middle fight will be Andre Dirrell (25-2, 16 KOs) versus Jose Uzcategui (26-1, 22 KOs) in a super middleweight bout.
