Top Rank on ESPN brings a Friday night world title doubleheader featuring two of their best young talents. In the main event, WBO featherweight titlist Oscar Valdez defends against unbeaten Filipino Genesis Servania. Gilberto Ramirez defends his WBO super middleweight strap against Jesse Hart in the co-main event. It isn’t the best matched card, but these are two talents worth watching anyway.
In any other era besides the one we are in, Oscar Valdez (22-0, 19 KOs) would still be a prospect. In truth, he still is despite his belt. Valdez’s best three wins are Chris Avalos, Evgeny Gradovich, and Miguel Marriaga. Those wins make the Mexican fighter a really good prospect and an emerging contender, but he hasn’t been in with anyone really at the top of the division. I am not saying that he couldn’t handle it, but simply that he has not been asked to. This is a prospect by definition.
Genesis Servania (29-0, 12 KOs) does not change this. Servania is a Filipino come forward action fighter who I fully expected to get swatted away pretty early here. He barely has anyone recognizable on his ledger to anyone but the most hardcore fans either. This is your traditional hot prospect, hype building matchup masquerading as a world title fight. Stylistically this is just a bad match for Servania, not to mention that he has much less talent all around as well.
Gilberto Ramirez (35-0, 24 KOs) and Jesse Hart (22-0, 18 KOs) are more interestingly matched in the co-feature. Ramirez is of course much more accomplished than Hart, his win alone over Arthur Abraham is more than Hart has done so far in his career. Yet, he has done it in a very specific manner by using his consistent height and reach advantages to stay on the outside, boxing safely and comfortably to a decision.
Jesse Hart is an interesting opponent here because he is one of the few fighters in the division who takes those advantages away from Gilberto Ramirez. The Philly fighter actually has an inch and a half reach on the Mexican range fighter. Of course, plenty of men have still outboxed their opponent from the outside despite being at a reach disadvantage, so it does remain to be seen if Jesse Hart has the other tools required outside of height and reach. The physical component does complicate things for the titleholder at the very least.
The show will begin at 10:30 PM Eastern on Friday night on ESPN. The card starts even earlier on the WatchESPN app at 7 PM and will feature significant Top Rank prospects such as popular Irish prospect Michael Conlan as a well as a pair of Rio gold medalists in Robson Conceicao and Fazliddin Gaibnazarov.
