Friday night on Bounce TV, a channel hardly anyone watches, one of the top young titlists in the sport Robert Easter Jr returns to defend his IBF lightweight title at home against his mandatory challenger, the always exciting Russian pressure fighter Denis Shafikov. Former highly touted prospect Julian “J-Rock” Williams also returns from his first defeat on the undercard.
Before I start complaining, this is an excellent fight. Toledo’s Robert Easter Jr (19-0, 14 KOs) is one of the better young fighters in the sport at 26 years old. He is a long lightweight with a lengthy reach that he uses quite well, but really there is no one thing that can be pointed to in Easter’s game to explain what makes him elite. He is just a gifted fighter in all aspects of the sport without any real weaknesses.
When Easter won his then vacant belt against Ghana’s Richard Commey, he also showed he was really willing to buckle down and engage in an action fight down the stretch to pull out the win. Commey is another excellent young fighter and Easter really needed to dig down deep to secure the victory, hurting Commey in the twelfth to seal his first title.
That willingness to engage in the Commey fight really bodes well for the action potential of this fight against Denis Shafikov (38-2-1, 20 KOs). There isn’t a lot of nuance to the Russian contender’s game; he wants to come forward and punch you as much as possible, consequences be damned. Shafikov has an excellent chin and often uses it as his defense when fighters manage to throw back amongst his constant work rate.
What has befuddled Shafikov in his two previous defeats, both for titles against Miguel Vasquez and Rances Barthelemy, is a real negative style of fighting. Both of those men will often engage in fights that attempt to minimize any contact whatsoever. So far in his young career, Robert Easter Jr’s response to aggression has not been to try to minimize the fighting, but to respond with his own fire. This is a recipe for a very good world title fight. To top it off, Shafikov really seems to be coming into his own in his last two fights. First he thoroughly dominated then unbeaten PBC prospect Jamal Herring, stopping him in the final round, before winning a clean split decision over the aforementioned Richard Commey back in Russia to earn this fight.
Too bad hardly anyone will watch this. Bounce TV is a niche network without truly large distribution across the country. PBC frontman Al Haymon owns a piece of it, however, so he sometimes sends fights to the upstart network. That in itself is fine, the more boxing the merrier, but to send a fight like this is criminal. The winner of this fight deserves exposure they are just not going to receive here. This is a Showtime quality fight. Failing their interest, which I would not understand, this is an amazing FS1 fight. Fox Sports 1 is not a major channel, but at least it is available for basically everyone with cable. Easter/Shafikov would even be a really good undercard to a major FOX or CBS fight. It deserves so much better than Bounce TV.
The co-feature of the card is the return of Julian “J-Rock” Williams (22-1-1, 14 KOs). J-Rock has been a promising prospect for a while, but he was stopped in five in his first title shot against Jermall Charlo last December. His opponent will be little known Joshua Conley (14-1-1, 9 KOs). Conley is here to be an easy get-well opponent for J-Rock’s career and confidence.
Unbeaten PBC welterweight prospects Ivan Golub (13-0, 11 KOs) and Jamontay Clark (11-0, 7 KOs) also meet on the card, but it is unclear if the fight will be televised. It is a great matchup so I hope it will be. Without as many dates as they once had, PBC seems to be trying to clear up which prospect to really get behind with this sort of booking, making this a high stakes bout early in both fighters’ careers.
The show starts at 9 PM Eastern from Toledo, Ohio, Robert Easter Jr’s hometown. Toledo has never been a fight town, but PBC chose to give Easter Jr an easy victory lap sort of defense at home after winning his belt and he drew a great crowd. The hope here is to turn him into a local big draw like Terence Crawford is in Omaha.
If you do not get Bounce TV, and you probably don’t, then the fight is available on the Brown Sugar streaming service. This, like Bounce itself, a streaming service targeted at African-Americans. More importantly, it offers a free seven day trial. I will be signing up, watching the fight, and canceling. I can only recommend you do the same.
