This week we had significant action in multiple divisions, but overall the favorites won and it didn’t shake up the rankings too much. Still, we do have movement at heavyweight, light heavyweight welterweight, and bantamweight to report following a busy weekend in the sport.
Midday US time, Dmitry Bivol rolled over non-contender Trent Broadhurst on HBO in defense of his light heavyweight belt. While this result on its own doesn’t do anything for such a heavy favorite like Bivol, it did allow me to re-evaluate his ranking and I moved him up one spot to #11. This brought the young Russian emerging star past Jean Pascal who I think he’d beat pretty easily at this point.
On the same card, Scott Quigg won and held his #6 featherweight ranking. Also, previously barely ranked Derek Chisora was upset by unranked Agit Kabayel. While Kabayel still remains just outside of the S8C Top 25 at heavyweight, he also pulled Chisora straight out of the rankings with him.
Speaking of heavyweights, of course Deontay Wilder retained his #3 spot following his thrashing of Bermane Stiverne in their pointless rematch on Showtime. He will eventually move up to second when Wladimir Klitschko times out after a year of inactivity, assuming the Ukrainian legend stays retired anyway. Off television in the division Dominic Breazeale picked up a big for his career win over Eric Molina too. This moved him up three spots to #13, Molina’s old spot, and sent his defeated opponent free falling down to #19.
Two other fights on the Showtime card impacted the rankings. After Shawn Porter defeated Adrian Granados, I decided to accept the fact that the Pacquiao era is done and let Porter pass him into the #4 slot. Granados held at #11. Sergey Lipinets also held at #11 just one division down. His opponent, Akihiro Kondo, entered the junior welterweight rankings at #23 due to his strength in defeat.
Speaking of welterweights, formerly ninth ranked Jessie Vargas has timed out due to a year of inactivity without a current fight scheduled. Hugo Ruiz also did so at bantamweight. He was ranked even higher at fifth.
Finally, two significant cards were held in Mexico. They resulted in #21 junior welterweight Jose Zepeda, #18 junior lightweight Jhonny Gonzalez, and number #1 bantamweight Luis Nery to all hold their positions in victory. Nery was challenged a bit in his non-title, stay busy fight against then twenty fifth ranked Filipino Arthur Villanueva though. Villanueva even put him down in the fourth round. Given the strength of his performance and the tangled, everyone is equal style mess at the back end of the bantamweight rankings, it was easy to move Villanueva up from last to #17 thanks to his exciting performance in defeat against the top man in the division.
