Top Rank on ESPN returns Saturday night, but not in a compelling manner. While Bryant Jennings and Jesse Hart are fine names to have on the card, neither is in a fight that looks to be particularly interesting.
After three straight wins over solid opposition in Andrey Fedosov, Artur Szpilka, and Mike Perez, Bryant Jennings (23-2, 14 KOs) definitely earned his title shot against longtime heavyweight kingpin Wladimir Klitschko in 2014. Jennings put on an extremely game and occasionally competitive performance that night too. He clearly lost the fight, but he put on a much better showing than any opponent had against Wladimir in a number of years. With the benefit of hindsight we now know that that performance was more about the first signs of slippage from the aging heavyweight great, but at the time it looked more like Jennings was a real top fighter.
This perception mostly ended on Jennings’s next fight, however. Then much avoided Cuban slugger Luis Ortiz dropped him several times on the way to a seventh round stoppage win. Bryant was still game and did well when he wasn’t on the canvas, but his night ended there early nonetheless. After that bad night in 2014, the Philadelphia heavyweight took a nearly two year long hiatus before signing with Top Rank and returning to the ring almost a year ago to the day. He has fought four straight lower level fights on Top Rank undercards in that time, winning three of them by stoppage.
Here Jennings gets his first main event in his new deal. His opponent Alexander Dimitrenko (41-3, 26 KOs) brings little more to the ring than those four though, unfortunately. Sure, Dimitrenko brings some serious size and his a minor bit of name value in the sense that fight fans will have heard of him at least, but he’s no more a top fighter than Joey Dawejko at this point in his career. A decade ago Alexander was considered a potential top fighter in the division, but Eddie Chambers giving up 35 lbs in the ring put an end to that in 2009. He has stepped up twice since and been dominated by Kubrat Pulev and Joseph Parker. Dimitrenko is here to fall over. He might not because Bryant Jennings is a soft hitter for the sport’s historical glamour division, but there is little chance the Russian gets a win here.
The same extremely low odds of an upset hold true in the co-main event too. Recent former super middleweight titleholder Jesse Hart (24-1, 20 KOs) is a world level fighter and Mike Gavronski (24-2-1, 15 KOs) is a regional level guy, nothing more. That is far from an insult as he is a quality fighter, but just not on this level. Much like Dimitrenko, he’s here to get knocked out. Unfortunately for him, he almost certainly will too as Jesse Hart is a serious puncher unlike Jennings in the main event. In truth Hart is just biding his time here while waiting for either a second crack at Zurdo Ramirez or a shot at one of the other titleholders.
The show begins at 10 PM Eastern on ESPN or the ESPN app while the ESPN+ prelims begin three hours earlier at 7. The likes of Jason Sosa, Shakur Stevenson, and Oleksandr Teslenko will be in competition on the earlier broadcast.
