Friday night Fox Sports 1 features a main event with major implications when Sergiy Derevyanchenko meets Tureano Johnson in an IBF eliminator. The winner will be mandated to face the winner of next month’s major Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez PPV. Intriguing middleweight prospect and emerging contender Immanuel Aleem is also featured in the undercard bout.
Sergiy Derevyanchenko (10-0, 8 KOs), nicknamed The Technician, is already a significant contender at age 31 despite his limited professional ledger. This is both because he was a major amateur who appeared in the Olympics and also because he went 22-1 in the semi-professional World Series of Boxing organization against pretty good competition. As a pro, his best win has been a two round smashing of former titleholder Sam Soliman, though the Australian is aging. The Technician has long been penciled in as a future potential world titleholder and here he gets to fight for that opportunity.
Tureano Johnson (20-1, 14 KOs) is a very rare fighter from the Bahamas. He looks like a good one too, though admittedly his resume is lacking in significant wins. He nearly had one in 2014. In what was an excellent fight, Tureano Johnson came close to dominating Curtis Stevens for nine and a partial rounds. He was clearly winning when with about a minute to go, Johnson fell victim to one of Curtis Steven’s patented left hooks. The hurt Bahamian fell back into the ropes, Stevens flurried, and the fight was called off. The stoppage was very premature as Stevens had landed nothing in that flurry following one big shot. Effectively, Tureano Johnson was robbed of what have been his marquee win.
Now Johnson and Derevyanchenko get a chance to find that major win in one another. The winner will also potentially get Gennady Golovkin or Canelo Alvarez next as well as they will be the mandatory IBF contender. Of course, either of those fighters could decline the fight. GGG could move up or Canelo could vacate, for example, but the potential lure is still in place.
In the co-featured bout, exciting 23 year old prospect Immanuwel Aleem (17-0-1, 10 KOs) will be matched with Hugo Centeno Jr (25-1, 13 KOs). Aleem is riding high having derailed the Ievgen Khytrov hype train in January in what was an absolutely epic brawl that will be in the fight of the year discussions come December. Centeno is a good foe for this point in Aleem’s career too. His one loss came two fights ago against Polish fighter Maciej Sulecki in what was a matchup of unbeaten prospects. Hugo acquitted himself well over the first two thirds or so in the fight, but he faded and was stopped dramatically in the final frame. He will be looking for redemption here, but it won’t be easy to find against Immanuwel Aleem.
The show begins at 9 PM Eastern on Fox Sports 1. I don’t have a list of the shows in front of me, but off memory this is one of if not the single best cards to have aired on the network. I am looking forward to this one.
