Saturday night at 8 PM on FOX, former lightweight title holder Omar Figueroa Jr returns to action against Robert Guerrero after nearly twenty months on the shelf. The triple header reopens Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum to boxing and also includes top light heavyweight prospect Marcus Browne against local attraction Sean Monaghan and an all Polish heavyweight showdown between Artur Szpilka and Adam Kownacki.
The last time boxing was featured in the Nassau Coliseum was 1986. That show was main evented by a 19 year old Mike Tyson in his 19th professional contest eight months before his first world title. Now thanks to recent renovations, the former home of the NHL’s New York Islanders is back in the fight game.
The Coliseum should be reopened with a pretty good scrap too. Both Omar Figueroa Jr (26-0-1, 18 KOs) and Robert Guerrero (33-5-1, 18 KOs) fight in fan friendly, action oriented styles. Guerrero used to be much more of a relaxed sniper befitting of his nickname “The Ghost”, but ever since his 2012 two weight class jump from lightweight, he has been a brawler. Both in 2012 and 2014, The Ghost won fight of the year candidates against Andre Berto and Yoshihiro Kamegai respectively.
Recent years have not been as kind to the former two division titleholder, however. Prior to the 2014 Kamegai win, Guerrero lost a decision to Floyd Mayweather Jr. This is a completely excusable loss against one of the greatest fighters of all time, but what followed is the problem. 2015 brought a wide, noncompetitive loss to Keith Thurman and worse yet a “win” over a pretty limited fighter in Aaron Martinez that definitely should have been a loss. 2016 brought a competitive, but clear loss to Danny Garcia and then a catastrophic defeat to literal Argentinian cab driver David Emmanuel Peralta.
While 2016 was bad for Guerrero, it didn’t exist at all for Omar Figueroa Jr. The unbeaten former lightweight belt holder will be returning Saturday for the first time since December of 2015. Though he is still undefeated, Figueroa did not exactly go out on a high note either. The red flags for Figueroa probably should have started in 2013 when he struggled a bit with limited Japanese fighter Nihito Arakawa, but that was such an insane, action stuffed contest that it was hard to do anything but lavish praise on the fighters afterward.
Next Figueroa was very lucky to keep his belt against Jerry Belmontes, a fighter who at the time was in the middle of ten fight stretch where he went 2-8. Most everyone, aside from two of the three official judges, scored that fight for Belmontes. The Texan did win his next bout convincingly, but 2015 brought another two less than stellar performances.
First, Omar received another questionable decision over thought to be shot ex-titlist Ricky Burns that was aided by some incompetent officiating in Figueroa’s favor. Finally, before stepping away for his hiatus, Figueroa narrowly eked out another close decision against yet another thought to be shot opponent in Antonio DeMarco. These cards were easier to stomach as Figueroa had built a big lead, but DeMarco rocked him repeatedly down the stretch and nearly stole the fight over its second half. Figueroa also missed the originally targeted junior welterweight limit by eleven pounds.
A lot of Figueroa’s troubles are chalked up to his very real issues with his hands. Indeed, these are among the worst issues a fighter can have for very obvious reasons. To my eye, however, Figueroa overall is just not a particularly good fighter when measured against those on the world level he is often supposed to be at. His offense is predictable, certainly dampened by his hand injuries, and his defense is barely there at all. I do favor him over the version of Guerrero that lost to David Peralta last August, but if the determined version of The Ghost that showed up against Danny Garcia last January is in the ring with Figueroa, I can’t count him out.
I don’t believe either of these fighters can be expected to deliver against any top welterweights, so in that sense this is not necessarily a great broadcast network PBC main event. From the more important perspective, however, this could be one hell of a brawl. It is hard to complain about that.
The co-main event of the broadcast probably pits 35 year old local hero Seanie Monaghan (28-0, 17 KOs) in a little over his head with 26 year old former US Olympian Marcus Browne (19-0, 14 KOs). Monaghan, who will be providing a lot of the draw locally to this show, has made his career fighting good domestic level fighters, but he has never stepped up even particularly close to fighting someone as talented as Browne. Two fights ago Browne did struggle quite a bit with the very underrated Radivoje Kalajdzic, but in his most recent outing he redeemed himself and then some with a spectacular domination of recent former title challenger Thomas Williams Jr. On paper Browne is way too much for Monaghan, but we will see if the crowd can rally their local favorite to an unlikely upset victory.
The opener of the FOX card will pit Polish former heavyweight title challenger Artur Szpilka (20-2, 15 KOs) against fellow Pole Adam Kownacki (15-0, 12 KOs). A crafty (for a heavyweight) southpaw, Szpilka is a good second tier big man who beat Tomasz Adamek and gave Deontay Wilder problems before being separated from his consciousness extremely violently courtesy of a single Wilder right hand late in the contest. A year and a half later, this will be Szpilka’s first fight back, presumably because he just woke up. As an opponent, Kownacki is a bit of an unknown as he is receiving his first real exposure here.
All in all, this looks like an entertaining card on paper. The opener could go either way as is the case with most heavyweight bouts, but Marcus Browne is being set up to look pretty spectacular here on national television while the main event is a near lock to deliver a good scrap even if it isn’t likely to deliver an actual welterweight contender. A boxing fan could do much worse.
Even better, this card is scheduled to conclude at 10 PM with a smaller FS1 card starting immediately after at the same venue. This means that the show will not significantly conflict with HBO’s even better triple header that is scheduled to start at 10:15. If all three fights go the distance then it will likely overlap some, but overall these cards are not competing. With Abraham/Eubank in the UK during the day US time, that makes for three quality cards on one Saturday without any significant conflict of time. That is a win for fight fans everywhere.
