Another week, another Wednesday update to the S8C Top 25s. This week we had a big show HBO headlined by Sergey Kovalev, the return of Devon Alexander, a cruiserweight upset, movement in the super bantamweight top 5, and more. It was a deceptively busy week for top fighters.
In the week’s main event, Sergey Kovalev held on to his #2 ranking and regained his old WBO belt with an absolute thrashing of previously twentieth ranked Vyacheslav Shabranskyy of Ukraine. With the loss, Shabranskyy only narrowly hangs onto the rankings at #25. It was a pretty bad showing, but light heavyweight isn’t deep. It was hard enough letting Chad Dawson pass him.
As for why Kovalev is ranked #2, it is because Andre Ward still reigns above him. I don’t listen to fighters’ talk at all. Once he has been inactive for a year, he will be removed like everyone else. Too many men claim retirement only to quickly come back to pay any attention to words at this point. Sullivan Barrera also held onto his light heavyweight ranking, the #4 spot, with his win over unranked Dominican Felix Valera in the co-main event.
Opening that HBO show was Yuriorkis Gamboa’s controversial decision win over Jason Sosa at more or less junior lightweight. I did score that fight for Sosa like everyone else, but you won’t hear me crying robbery. There were a lot of close rounds. In fact, the few rounds that weren’t close were in Gamboa’s favor. I thought Sosa edged those close swing rounds that made up the rest of the fight, but I don’t think this would be a particularly hard one to end up scoring for the Cuban. With that said, I left Yuriorkis at #16 at lightweight, but also debuted him at #13 at junior lightweight where he is a much better fighter. I penalized Jason Sosa one spot, but he still is ranked ahead of Gamboa at #12.
Former unified titleholder Devon Alexander returned at welterweight on Tuesday with a strong showing over Walter Castillo. Reportedly the St. Louis native was struggling with an all too familiar pain killer addiction during his decline as a top fighter and is once again clean. Regardless, he looked solid on FS1 and I brought him back at #16. He’d be higher in a lot of other divisions.
In a pretty big under the radar cruiserweight upset, previously fifteenth ranked Thabiso Mchunu fell to unranked Constantin Bejenaru this weekend as well. The bad result dropped the South African all the way down to #24 while the rare top Moldovan debuts at #19. I did not see this result coming, personally.
Also in action, Julio Ceja struggled too much for my liking against his journeyman, stay busy opponent on TV Azteca. It became clear to me that having him ahead of Rey Vargas was downright absurd, so I swapped them at super bantamweight. Vargas is now #3 and Ceja is now #4.
Finally, highly touted Filipino prospect Mark Magsayo picked up a win too, but not a notable enough one to change his #18 ranking. Heavyweight Mariusz Wach did manage to move up a spot to #24 following his secondary title win over Alexander Ustinov, but that is more because I am increasingly uncomfortable having Tomasz Adamek in my heavyweight rankings than anything due to Charr.
