What’s this? Adonis Stevenson is in a second straight excellent matchup? Yes, sir. We also have a new date for Jacobs v Derevyanchenko along with its undercard fight, a ShoBox, and a couple early stage conversations.
- First, Spanish twenty two year old Sergio Martinez promoted bantamweight Jon Fernandez (16-0, 14 KOs) makes his second ShoBox appearance and first main event against O’Shaquie Foster (13-2, 8 KOs) on September 29th. I really like this main event. Fernandez has shown some serious power, but all too often these guys run into a skill wall the first time they get in the ring with someone who refuses to engage and instead tries to box. Foster is that fighter. We’ll learn something here for sure. Two other fights on the card round out the televised tripleheader. Unbeaten featherweights Irvin Gonzalez Jr (10-0, 9 KOs) and Carlos Ramos (9-0, 6 KOs) will compete alongside and lightweights Wesley Ferrer (12-0-1, 7 KOs) and Steven Ortiz (8-0, 3 KOs).
- The big HBO show main evented by Danny Jacobs (34-2, 29 KOs) and Sergey Derevyanchenko (12-0, 10 KOs) for the vacant IBF middleweight title has been moved to October 27th, apparently at the request of HBO. I am not sure why exactly. We also have a co-feature, or at least a tentative one. Alberto Machado (20-0, 16 KOs) will be defending his junior lightweight title against Yuandale Evans (20-1, 14 KOs) if all goes according to plan. It isn’t a great main event, but that kind of fight is basically all HBO has to work with out of Golden Boy’s stable at this point.
- Pigs must be flying. Adonis Stevenson (29-1-1, 24 KOs) is going to make a second difficult title defense in a row. Not only that, he’s going to fight his mandatory challenger for the first time in his long title reign. Oleksandr Gvozdyk (15-0, 12 KOs) gets the call on December 1st. Showtime will televise, of course. This is a damn good fight that could very realistically end the 40 year old’s lengthy reign as a light heavyweight titleholder. Gvozdyk is young and an outstanding technician with some serious pop. No one has more power than what is in Stevenson’s left, however, so he can absolutely never be counted out accordingly
- According to people involved with the fighters, an all British super middleweight showdown between former titleholder James DeGale (24-2-1, 14 KOs) and rising contender Rocky Fielding (27-1, 15 KOs) could be in the works. Fielding’s people really seem to want it, at least. Of course they do. James DeGale is a clearly diminished fighter and he still has some real name value in the UK. If this fight happens, I’d heavily favor Fielding. I don’t think he’s a real title contender, but I do think DeGale has fallen that far. James and his team clearly know it too as they had him vacate his belt rather than get beat up by mandatory challenger Jose Uzcategui. This is all just preliminary talk though.
- Finally, Floyd Mayweather Jr did sort of an odd thing for a promoter and announced on Twitter that his rising young titleholder Gervonta Davis Jr (20-0, 19 KOs) would defend against Abner Mares (31-3-1, 15 KOs) at some point this year. We don’t a date or location, but there was of course a Showtime logo on the picture he posted. As a fight this is a pretty good matchup on paper, though I can’t help picture Tank Davis running through this slightly older version of Mares. Still, it would be the toughest matchup of the 23 year old’s career by far. I can get behind it.
