The wheels of the sport never stop turning. Over the last day or so several fights have come to fruition or have been reported to be about to. We have an HBO tripleheader highlighted by the return of Jaime Munguia, another uninspiring PBC on FOX main event, David Benavidez’s next defense, and more.
- Newly minted junior welterweight titleholder Jaime Munguia (29-0, 25 KOs) will make his first defense on July 21st against former titleholder Liam Smith (25-1-1, 14 KOs) of the UK. Smith was originally supposed to be fighting for the belt earlier this year against Sadam Ali, but an injury forced him out and allowed Munguia to swoop in as a late replacement. Munguia made quite the statement with his opportunity too, battering and dropping Ali repeatedly in an extremely one sided fight. Liam Smith will be looking to reclaim the belt he lost to Canelo Alvarez in 2016 on HBO PPV, but he likely faces a pretty uphill battle in doing so. HBO will broadcast.
- The Munguia v Smith HBO show is going to be a tripleheader as well. Puerto Rican junior lightweight titleholder Alberto Machado (19-0, 16 KOs) will defend his belt against Ghanaian mandatory challenger Rafael Mensah (31-0, 23 KOs) in the co-main event. That’s a tough fight to get a read on given that Mensah has basically no international exposure. It probably isn’t good though given that Mensah hasn’t even taken a 10 round fight since 2014. Oh, the sanctioning bodies. A little better is the scheduled opener in the middleweight division. Demetrius Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs) will return to the network and meet Golden Boy’s Olympic medalist of a prospect Yamaguchi Falcao (15-0, 7 KOs) of Brazil. By the historical standards of HBO, that’s a weak fight. We’re well past whining about that at this point though. In a vacuum, I like it. We’ll learn a lot about Falcao and “Boo Boo” Andrade will get another chance to impress in a top heavy division.
- PBC is looking to keep up the recent tradition of putting on pretty mediocre FOX main events come August 4th. ESPN’s Dan Rafael is reporting that largely washed up welterweights Victor Ortiz (32-6-3, 25 KOs) and Brandon Rios (34-4-1, 25 KOs) are going to meet in the show’s main event. Rios hasn’t won a meaningful fight since his 2012 first showdown with Mike Alvarado. We have to go back a year further for Ortiz who last got a notable win in 2011 against Andre Berto. Competitively there is nothing wrong with this fight and it will likely be action oriented with a finish, but yet again it is frustrating to watch PBC use its largest audience platform for a nothing fight like this. Neither of these men are anything close to top welterweights in 2018.
- It looks like heavyweights will collide on the undercard of Danny Garcia and Shawn Porter’s vacant title fight on August 25th. That is they will assuming the main event gets finalized. Rising Polish contender Adam Kownacki (17-0, 14 KOs) and comical former heavyweight titleholder Charles Martin (25-1-1, 23 KOs) will be looking to get closer to a title shot at each other’s expense. Kownacki burst onto the scene with a surprising domination of Artur Szpilka last July and will be the favorite here. Yes, Charles Martin did legitimately and briefly hold a real belt, but he is the pretty clear cut worst heavyweight titleholder of all time. He didn’t ever fight anyone to get there. When the IBF inexplicably gave him his shot, he won on a freak injury stoppage. Anthony Joshua lifted the belt off him inside two rounds. If this fight happens, it will be a big opportunity for him as Kownacki marks the only real top competition that he has faced outside of Joshua.
- September is the targeted month for David Benavidez’s (20-0, 17 KOs) mandatory WBC super middleweight title defense against Anthony Dirrell (32-1-1, 24 KOs). The fight was scheduled to go to purse bid this weekend, but unsurprisingly the two camps were able to come to an agreement without that process. This makes sense given that they are both PBC fighters. I will remain skeptical that Anthony Dirrell is going to take on a top fighter again until it happens though. The 33 year old Flint fighter has taken five low level fights since losing his title narrowly in 2015 to Badou Jack and hasn’t exactly seemed motivated to take on top competition. He is also talking retirement, but has gone on record that he’d like one more title shot before hanging the gloves up.
