HBO’s Boxing After Dark returns Saturday night with three fights from Inglewood, Calfiornia, two for junior lightweight titles and one matchup of top ten light heavyweights. In the main event, Miguel Berchelt defends his WBC junior lightweight belt against all action Takashi Miura while Jezreel Corrales defends his WBA belt in the same division against Robinson Castellanos. Joe Smith Jr and Sullivan Barrera open the show in the light heavyweight division.
On one hand, it kinds of feels like 25 year old Miguel Berchelt (31-1, 28 KOs) came out of no where this past January when he stopped Francisco Vargas in the 11th round. Prior to that career defining night, Berchelt’s best win was against either Antonio Escalante, Rene Gonzales, or Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo. Escalante and Gonzales were good domestic level Mexican fighter while Piriyapinyo was a Thai fighter with a typical, gaudy but empty Thai boxing record. Nevertheless, Berchelt handled him more impressively than either Chris John or Vasyl Lomachenko had, so that was a good win at least from a comparative sense.
The Vargas win definitely announced the power punching Mexican’s arrival on the world stage. After a few early entertaining and even opening rounds, Berchelt began to take over and lay a real beating into Vargas. After about the fifth round, the fight was no longer competitive. It could have been stopped before the end it reached even as Vargas was just taking increasingly hopeless punishment the longer the non-contest went.
Of course, there is the potentially valid idea that a 32 year old fighter who had been through many brutal wars in a smaller weight class like Francisco Vargas was inevitably going to hit the wall overnight. We won’t get to know if Vargas is a little shot now until his next fight and even then we will never get to know how much of that might have come from Miguel Berchelt, but we can put those concerns aside for this fight for one reason.
Takashi Miura (31-3-2, 24 KOs) is more or less the same. The former Japanese world titlist has been involved in fight of the year contenders in two of the past three years. He is also 33 years old himself. No questions about Berchelt having potentially only looked great against a worn down fighter can be definitively answered here as Miura is in essentially the same career position as Francisco Vargas.
What will be answered in HBO’s main event for the WBC junior lightweight belt are punches. And they will be answered by more punches. The worst case scenario here from an entertainment perspective is that Berchelt overwhelms high mileage Takashi Miura early. It could definitely happen too. Yet, even that would be an impressive, star building performance for the young Mexican that you won’t want to miss. If Miura can stand up to the younger fighter early, then all bets are off except that this will be a war.
The co-main event pits unbeaten Panamanian WBA junior lightweight titlist Jezreel Corrales (21-1, 8 KOs) against recent Yuriorkis Gamboa toppler Robinson Castellanos (24-12, 12 KOs). Corrales came from more obscurity than even Miguel Berchelt last year when he upset longtime Japanese world titlist Takashi Uchiyama by improbable second round stoppage. Later in the year Corrales reaffirmed his win by repeating it, this time by decision. He will be fighting in the United States for the first time here.
Corrales’s opponent, Robinson Castellanos, is significantly better than his record suggests. Since starting his career 11-10, Castellanos is 13-2 with wins over the likes of Celestino Caballero, Ronny Rios, Rocky Juarez, and Yuriorkis Gamboa. He still does have losses against two good, but not world level fighters Rene Alvarado and Oscar Escandon during that window, both by stoppage, so it is fair to wonder if he isn’t still in a bit over his head here. Then again, we know little about Corrales except that he matches up well with Uchiyama. There is much to be learned in this contest and the winner could very well find himself in with the Berchelt/Miura winner the next time out. The stakes are high.
Opening the show will be a high level light heavyweight contest which may very well be the best matched fight on the card. Joe Smith Jr (23-1, 19 KOs) returns from his likely career ending knockout victory of the legendary Bernard Hopkins to face highly ranked Cuban Sullivan Barrera (19-1, 14 KOs). Between featuring Berchelt, Corrales, and Joe Smith, the theme of this card really is guys who went from unknown to important overnight. In Smith’s case, he was laughed off as a weak opponent for an NBC main event against Andrzej Fonfara before promptly executing his heavily favored opponent in the very first round.
Barrera’s only loss was last March to Andre Ward. Everyone loses to Andre Ward. Otherwise, he has good wins over the suddenly resurgent Karo Murat and then unbeaten Ukrainian prospect Vyacheslav Shabranskyy, both by stoppage. These aren’t super elite wins, but no one really has a collection of big time wins at light heavyweight right now. I have Barrera ranked tenth in the division, but the truth is that five through ten are basically interchangeable at this point as the bulk of the top of the division has yet to start fighting one another. Hopefully this well matched fight is the start of that changing.
The broadcast begins at 10:15 Eastern live on HBO. This means that if any overlap exists between this and the PBC card on FOX, it will be minimal as the PBC show is scheduled to end at 10 PM. Between this two cards and Eubank/Abraham in the UK, miraculously we will have three significant fight cards on Saturday without any serious time conflict. Cherish this, fellow fight fans, as that does not happen off.
