A few fights and cards have been announced over the last few days. Of note, former titleholder Devon Alexander will end his two year lay off, top light heavyweight contender Sullivan Barrera has an HBO slot, contender Julian “J-Rock” gets his first televised main event since his loss to Jermall Charlo, and more.
- First, son of former British star Nigel Benn, Conor Benn (9-0, 7 KOs), has been added to the off television portion of Eddie Hearn’s November 11th New York card headlined by Danny Jacobs. This is Hearn’s first foray into the American scene and it will be interesting to see how he fills out these undercards compared to his traditional British shows. Benn will of course meet a low level journeyman here as he is still a prospect.
- Julian Williams (23-1-1, 15 KOs) returns against Ishe Smith (29-8, 12 KOs) in the main event of a November 18th PBC on Bounce show almost one year after his knockout loss at the hands of big puncher Jermall Charlo. J-Rock has fought once since his failed title bid. Smith will be fighting for the first time in over a year. He beat Frank Galarza by majority decision last September. The card will also feature light heavyweight Lionell Thompson (18-4, 11 KOs) against unbeaten Earl Newman (10-0-1, 7 KOs) as its co-main event. That is a good test for Newman. The real draw here for me, however, is Olympic silver medalist Tugstsogt Nyambayar (8-0, 8 KO) supposedly meeting fellow top featherweight prospect Xavier Martinez (10-0, 6 KO). That one feels a bit too good to be true though as prospects are not basically ever matched like that, so we will see.
- Three days later on November 21st, PBC will present another card, this one on Fox Sports 1 featuring the return of former titleholder Devon Alexander (26-4, 14 KOs). Alexander has not fought for over two years following his upset loss to Aaron Martinez. His opponent will be Walter Castillo (26-4-1, 19 KOs). The Nicaraguan is 1-2-1 in his last four and is definitely there to be a win for Alexander to get his career back on track. Welterweights Miguel Cruz (16-0, 11 KOs) and David Grayton (15-1-1, 11 KOs) fight in the co-main event.
- The November 25th HBO card featuring the return of Sergey Kovalev and a potentially great fight between Jason Sosa and Robinson Castellanos has been expanded into a tripleheader. Cuban top light heavyweight Sullivan Barrera (20-1, 14 KOs) will meet lesser known Dominican Felix Valera (15-1, 13 KOs) as he tries to move closer to his title shot against Dmitry Bivol. In his last fight, Barrera really announced himself with an unexpected domination of top contender Joe Smith. Valera has no wins of note and was thoroughly controlled by the aforementioned Bivol that only time that he has stepped up.
- Rising contender Anthony Yigit (20-0-1, 7 KOs) will defend his European junior welterweight title against British fighter Joe Hughes (15-2, 6 KOs) on December 2nd. Yigit is coming off a career best win over Sandor Martin while Hughes is coming off a draw in a British title bid against then regional titlist Tyrone Nurse. Yigit should be favored here.
