In a move that basically any East Coast fight fan is incredibly thankful for, Showtime Championship Boxing will be getting an early start this Saturday at 6 PM Eastern. This is being done to seamlessly merge the Geronta Davis/Liam Walsh fight from the UK into the same telecast as the three fight card from Maryland headlined by Gary Russell Jr and Oscar Escandon. It also has the side benefit of having this card end right as the HBO Crawford/Diaz card is about to begin.
Traveling on the road for his first title defense ironically as the other half of the split site show airs from his home state of Maryland, Mayweather Promotions product Geronta Davis (17-0, 16 KOs) looks like he might be one of those really special talents that comes along every so often. He has tremendously bouncy legs, very fast hands, and good punching power that accumulates as a fight wears on. On top of all that, Davis is an extremely aggressive figher who prefers to use his special physical attributes to inflict as much damage as possible on his opponent. Davis is a fan friendly potential star who put all that on display as he battered Jose Pedraza for his first title back in January.
It feels kind of weird to count out a competent professional fighter like Liam Walsh (21-0, 14 KOs), but it is just hard to imagine him winning this. Walsh is a good fighter. He clearly is a cut above that domestic level that many British fighters make their career at since he has just been cruising over those guys. Only Joe Murray four years ago has as much as given Walsh a really competitive fight. Otherwise he has been stopping his opponents or winning on really wide cards. The main problem I see here for the Englishman is not necessarily the athletic advantages that Davis will enjoy, but how stylistically Walsh might feed into them. Liam Walsh is a fighter who is very happy to come on the inside and bang with good, fluid combinations. That is his game, which should make this entertaining, but that is also Geronta Davis’s game and he has much more firepower to work with.
Gary Russell Jr (27-1, 16 KOs) main events the Maryland tripleheader against Oscar Escandon (25-2, 17 KOs). Honestly, I am having real difficulty getting excited about this side of the card. It is easy to get excited for Geronta Davis, but Russell Jr against another athletically overmatched fighter is a booking trope I am tiring of over time. I don’t mean to insult Escandon as he is a good fighter. His recent KO win over Robinson Castellanos is looking even better now that Castellanos toppled Gamboa, but he also lost split decisions to Moises Flores and Nehomar Cermeno. Again, good fighters, but Gary Russell Jr has more talent than all these guys and it is frustrating to watch him not use it. Since the Lomachenko loss, Russell Jr has only been fighting once a year. While this isn’t Patrick Hyland by any means, it is not the caliber of opponent I want to see him in with when he does decide to finally fight. I hope I am wrong and Escandon makes a real fight of this, but I doubt he will have the athletic ability to deal with Russell’s speed.
The middle fight of the card, Andre Dirrell (25-2, 16 KOs) versus Jose Uzcategui (26-1, 22 KOs) is unfortunately more of the same. In this case it is Dirrell who is the athletically gifted, but ultimately inactive fighter while Venezuela’s Uzcategui is the good, but probably not athletic enough fighter here to lose a decision. Uzcategui does have some power though and there is this sense that maybe there is some mental fragility in Andre’s game, so this fight isn’t quite as uninteresting as Russell/Escandon at least. It isn’t that far behind though. I mean we have seen Dirrell be a pretty brilliant outside boxer a few times. Now he is fighting a guy who was widely outboxed by Matt Korobov. That math is pretty simple. The silver lining here is that winner of this fight will be in line to fight James Degale. I can definitely get behind DeGale/Dirrell II as I quite enjoyed their first meeting.
Finally, opening the card, we have two division titlist Rances Barthelemy (25-0, 13 KOs) moving up to junior welterweight to meet Kiril Relikh (21-1, 19 KOs) in a title eliminator for a shot at Julius Indongo’s WBA belt. Relikh, trained by Ricky Hatton, is here because many feel he should have already won the WBA belt last October against Ricky Burns. Barthelemy has earned the right to basically just walk into an eliminator by being a two weight titlist already. Against Burns the previously unknown Belorussian pushed forward quite aggressively at times. Barthelemy often likes to fight backing up, so this could be a bull and the matador type fight. Hopefully Relikh can create consistent action because his Cuban opponent will be content to have a pretty dull fight if allowed to.
This card is a little more quantity than quality, but at least it is four fights with high level fighters to watch on a Saturday evening.
