We have a big fight this week, but it comes with an asterisk. Oleksandr Usyk and Murat Gassiev wrap up the cruiserweight World Boxing Super Series tournament with complete unification of the division. How will we watch it? I don’t know. HBO, ShoBox, and Golden Boy on ESPN will be on US TV at least though.
Friday, July 20th
Lamont Roach (16-0-1, 6 KOs) v Deivi Julio Bassa (20-4, 12 KOs), featherweights – Cancun, Mexico – Golden Boy on ESPN, 7 PM Eastern
Golden Boy kicks off the weekend with a show on ESPN Friday night. Lamont Roach Jr returns in the main event. Ostensibly he is a prospect, but his last fight was a draw against a past his prime, never really a contender in Orlando Cruz. I did score the fight for Roach, but the fact that he struggled at all with the Puerto Rican suggests that he will never be a true world level guy. He’ll look better here against Bassa, a Colombian with an entirely inflated record that Golden Boy has used to get wins to a few guys now. It won’t mean anything though,
Jaron Ennis (20-0, 18 KOs) v Armando Alvarez (18-0, 12 KOs), welterweights & Thomas Mattice (12-0, 10 KOs) v Zhora Hamazaryan (9-0, 6 KOs), lightweights & Montana Love (11-0, 5 KOs) v Kenneth Sims Jr (12-1, 4 KOs), lightweights – ShoBox – Showtime, 10 PM Eastern
I’m looking forward to this ShoBox. It isn’t that I expect the main event to be a particularly compelling fight as I know little of Armando Alvarez and expect him to fall here, but Jaron Ennis’s breakthrough to any sort of televised stage is overdue. Ennis was a major amateur who missed out on the Olympics by one fight thanks to a trilogy capping loss to Gary Antuanne Russell, a major prospect in his own right. This allowed Ennis to turn pro a little earlier than the Olympians and he’s been extremely active as evidenced by his record. Mattive, Love, and Sims Jr are all returnees coming back to the series too which is one of the core appeals of ShoBox. It is nice to see these guys develop.
Saturday, July 21st
Oleksandr Usyk (15-0, 11 KOs) v Murat Gassiev (26-0, 19 KOs), Undisputed Cruiserweight Championship – Moscow, Russia
First, the good. This is an amazing fight, one of the best that can be made in the sport. All four titles will be unified in the cruiserweight division for the first time in the four belt era. Plus, it is the finals of an excellent tournament in the World Boxing Super Series. Usyk is the favorite, but Gassiev is skilled and the bigger puncher. It figures to be a good action fight too. Now, the bad. First and foremost, we don’t have US television for this fight and probably won’t. This is a travesty. Hopefully the World Boxing Super Series will broadcast it on Facebook like it did with the semifinals, but we won’t likely know until last minute. Second, the Russian location has me a little concerned here. It isn’t exactly neutral territory and I’d hate to see this one end in controversy. Boxing gonna boxing though.
Jaime Munguia (29-0, 25 KOs) v Liam Smith (26-1-1, 14 KOs), WBO junior middleweight title & Alberto Machado (19-0, 16 KOs) v Rafael Mensah (31-0, 23 KOs), WBA junior lightweight title – Las Vegas, Nevada – HBO, 10 PM Eastern
Semi-retired outlet HBO makes what is basically a guest appearance at this point this weekend with Golden Boy’s world title doubleheader. The main event is interesting even if it is doesn’t live up to the historical standards of the brand, necessarily. We’re past the point of beating that drum though. Jaime Munguia is a huge, powerful junior middleweight coming off an unexpected thrashing of Sadam Ali to easily steal his belt. Is he that good or was it just a size advantage that carried the day? Liam Smith is a more natural junior middleweight and should let us know. Puerto Rican titleholder Alberto Machado returns in the co-main event. He’s an exciting, vulnerable power puncher, but it is hard to say what he is in against here. Mandatory challenger Rafael Mensah has never fought anyone of note or outside of Ghana at all. He is probably not going to be a tough out here, but I’ve got nothing to go on to say that for sure other than a less than decorated history of random mandatory challengers.
