Believe it or not, there are actually two competing cards Saturday night. One is Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev in their highly anticipated HBO PPV rematch. The other is welterweight fringe contenders Pablo Cesar Cano and Fidel Maldanado Jr meeting on Golden Boy on ESPN2. Fight fans are going to be busy either watching the PPV or following the reports of others watching the fight so I don’t know who the audience for this show is, but here we go anyway.
Of the two fighters, Pablo Cesar Cano (30-5-1, 21 KOs) is the more accomplished. He first found himself on the world scene with a 140 pound title fight against an aging, but looking back probably a little underrated junior welterweight version of Erik Morales. That night didn’t go well for him.
From there he picked up a couple okay wins, really the first ones of his career. Before Morales, he had built up a completely empty record. Now he was beating good, but not elite fighters like Johan Perez. This was enough to get him another title shot against Paulie Malignaggi. In that fight Cano fought well enough that many thought he should have won, but he didn’t get the decision. It was a close fight.
Next Cano fought a rapidly fading, but not yet completely shot 41 year old Shane Mosley. In an entertaining toss up fight, Mosley got the decision. While I personally thought Cano beat Malignaggi, here I had no preference on the winner as I saw it a dead even contest.
After Mosley, Pablo Cesar Cano beat the always good, never great Ashley Theophane. This run where he could have been 3-0 against Malignaggi, Mosley, and Theophane really was his apex. Since then it has been up and down for him. He got stopped on cuts by Fernando Angulo and lost a really disappointing decision to lesser known Alan Sanchez, for example, but he is also coming off a win against the sometimes very good Mauricio Herrera.
Pablo has had a career at the top level of the sport. It hasn’t been consistently successful, but it has been up there against top fighters. Fidel Maldanado Jr (23-3-1, 19 KOs) has not.
Two of Maldanado’s losses and the draw represent the three times he has fought even C+ level talent. In 2012 he lost a narrow ShoBox split decision against Michael Perez, Amir Iman knocked him out three years later, and last May he fought to a draw with Art Hovhannisyan on Golden Boy’s Estrella TV series.
On paper Cano is a full class above Maldanado. Then again, he did lose to Alan Sanchez just two fights ago so who knows with these guys. At the very least they both have relatively fan friendly styles, so it should be a good watch if you do decide to watch it later. DVR it if you can, or it will be archived on WatchESPN.com for a little while if you’d rather go that way.
The undercard bout with be local super flyweight prospect Joshua Franco (10-0, 6 KOs) in against Oscar Mojica (10-2, 1 KO). I’ve got nothing for you with this fight. Franco is only 21 and super flyweight is a pretty amazing division right now. Oscar Mojica has no power. How is that for hard hitting analysis on two fighters I do not remember seeing before?
The show begins at 11 PM eastern on ESPN2. Yes, for some reason this is going against Ward/Kovalev II. As always with these Golden Boy ESPN cards, if you are watching online you can catch another fight or two on the preliminary show that in this case starts at 8:30.
Kovalev and Ward though.
