Four prominent fights have been made and announced over the last few days. We have a PBC card featuring Jessie Vargas’s debut under their umbrella, a Golden Boy card headlined by Diego De La Hoya, Naoya Inoue’s near New Year’s Eve opponent, and more. The year in boxing is not quite over just yet.
- I mentioned in another post that recent lightweight title challenger Denis Shafikov (38-3-1, 20 KOs) had been added to December 9th’s HBO card to be aired on HBO Latino. Now we have his opponent in Nicaraguan fringe contender Rene Alvarado (27-8, 19 KOs). Shafikov will be heavily favored here, but Alvarado is a competent professional with a couple decent wins. The HBO Latino portion of this card will be aired on tape delay after the main card ends.
- Thursday of the following week on December 14th, we will see the return of Diego De La Hoya (20-0, 9 KOs) to headlined a Golden Boy on ESPN card against Jose Salgado (35-4-2, 28 KOs). Last time out the 23 year old De La Hoya knocked former titleholder Randy Cabellero from the ranks of the unbeaten in a surprisingly dominant performance, so this is a big step back down. Salgado is a career super flyweight coming off a defeat to a journeyman and is being pulled up two weight classes here.
- The very next night, Friday, December 15th, marks the return to action of former welterweight titleholder Jessie Vargas. This time he will be fighting under the PBC banner on FS1 after quietly leaving Top Rank. Since this main event will be his first fight back since losing to Manny Pacquiao a little over a year ago, he is in soft against gate keeper Aaron Herrera (33-7-2, 21 KOs).
- It looks like Japan will have a big card on December 30th in addition to their traditional New Year’s Eve card. As mentioned previously in a different article, Naoya Inoue (14-0, 12 KOs) will take tune up against little known Frenchman Yoan Boyeaux (41-4, 26 KOs) on that show. Now we know that WBC light flyweight titleholder Ken Shiro (11-0, 5 KOs) will make a defense of his belt there too against Panama’s Gilberto Pedroza (18-3-2, 8 KOs).
- As for Japan’s big annual New Year’s Eve card the next night, it has picked up a real solid light flyweight unification bout pitting WBA and IBF titleholders Ryoichi Taguchi (26-2, 12 KOs) and Milan Melindo (37-2, 13 KOs) against one another. This is a real excellent fight and one you should look forward too. Hiroto Kyoguchi (8-0, 6 KOs) will also defend his IBF minimumweight title against Carlos Buitagro (30-2-1, 17 KOs) on the same show.
