There was quite a bit of action this week involving ranked fighters. This resulted in movement within the top ten of multiple divisions, chief among them junior lightweight where Alberto Machado upset Jezreel Corrales by come from behind stoppage to win his first title. Demetrius Andrade moved to middleweight on the same card. Also, how did fights involving Murat Gassiev, Ryota Murata, and Josh Warrington impact their rankings?
In the biggest move of the week and maybe the biggest since I have been doing this, Puerto Rico’s Alberto Machado went from a prospect/fringe contender ranked at twenty five all the way to the top ten at #8 following his knockout title win over then third ranked Jezreel Corrales. With the loss, the Panamanian fell to #9. On the same card, Demetrius Andrade officially moved to middleweight. I debuted him at #11 between Andy Lee and Martin Murray. I also removed him from the 154 lb rankings as this is definitely meant to be a permanent move.
Also at middleweight, Ryota Murata’s win over Hassan N’Dam brought him up one spot to #9 while the loss dropped N’Dam from fifteenth to #18. On paper Murata beating N’Dam shouldn’t have had much of an impact because he already did despite the poor decision in their first fight, but the gap seemed even bigger this time around so I adjusted accordingly. The same card had two other title fights. #3 flyweight Daigo Higa stopped #13 Thomas Masson in defense of his belt with both fighters holding position. At light flyweight, Ken Shiro and Pedro Guevara swapped positions following Shiro’s close decision win. Shiro is #3 while Guevara is now #4.
Bantamweight also saw major movement. Ryan Burnett jumped from eighth all the way up to #2 following winning his second belt from previously second ranked Zhanat Zhakiyanov. ZZ dropped to #5. I considered putting Burnett number one over Luis Nery as Nery’s big win over Shinsuke Yamanaka is definitely tainted by his post fight drug test. Given that no one has really ruled on that yet, however, I have decided to wait.
In a jump that most weeks would have been the biggest, Polish junior middleweight Maciej Sulecki scored the biggest win of his career when he outpointed then top ten opponent Jack Culcay. Sulecki jumped from eighteenth to #10 while Culcay fell from ninth to #13. That fight was the co-main event of #2 cruiserweight Murat Gassiev’s destruction of Krzysztof Wlodarczyk. Gassiev held firm while Wlodarczyk fell one spot from tenth to #11. Given that the fight went about as I expected it to, I didn’t penalize Wlodarczyk too much. Anyone outside of the top ten would likely fall to Gassiev in similar fashion.
In the UK, Josh Warringon picked up a rare stoppage win over Dennis Ceylan. While the unexpected stoppage loss did drop Ceylan one spot to #24, Warrington probably never could have jumped Jesus M Rojas with this matchup. He is still #11. Finally, junior welterweight Jack Catterall moved himself up one spot to #17 and knocked previously twenty third ranked Tyrone Nurse clean out of the rankings in his British title win.
