The upcoming week is a relatively quiet one in the sport of boxing. Friday night brings three cards, but they are all small time without any immediate world level implications. There is one big fight on Saturday night at least. Even it has a strange method of delivery though.
Friday, August 10th
Max Ornelas (11-0-1, 4 KOs) v Raymond Tabugon (20-8-1, 10 KOs), bantamweights & Hector Lopez Jr (10-0-1, 6 KOs) v Sulaiman Segawa (10-1, 3 KOs), lightweights – Las Vegas, Nevada – BeIN Sports, 10 PM Eastern
Roy Jones Jr Promotions continues their television contract with BeIN sports by also continuing to highlight the talents of 20 year old bantamweight prospect Max Ornelas. Young Max isn’t a blue chipper or a must see fighter by any means, but Roy and company are doing a nice job slowly bringing him along. This show is what it is. We aren’t likely to find any serious implications here for the world level now or ever, but if you want to watch some fights then here are some fights to watch.
Hector Tanajara (14-0, 5 KOs) v Emmanuel Morales (7-2, 4 KOs), lightweights & Emilio Sanchez (15-1, 10 KOs) v Christopher Martin (30-10-3, 10 KOs), featherweights – Los Angeles, California – Estrella TV, 10 PM Eastern
Golden Boy’s low level LA Fight Club series returns to Estrella TV Friday night as well. Sometimes these shows just match regional level guys that won’t ever matter and sometimes they put their prospects on in stay busy mismatches. The latter is what this card is. That’s better than the alternative, I guess, though I will admit that even I don’t always bother with these. I don’t think that highly of Tanajara as a prospect either, though he did look better last time out.
Daniel Lozano (15-4, 11 KOs) v Ricardo Espinoza Franco (20-2, 17 KOs), bantamweights & Hairon Socarras (18-0-3, 12 KOs) v Jose Nieves (22-4-3, 11 KOs), featherweights – Tampa, Florida – Telemundo, 11:35 PM Eastern
Strong regional promoter All-Star Boxing returns late Friday night with a Telemundo date. In the main event, bantamweight contender Daniel Lozano meets an opponent with an empty record in what looks to be an easy fight. Lozano is surging right now in his career. After losing three straight in 2015 and looking every bit a regional level fighter, Lozano took 2016 off only to come roaring back in 2017 to easily rematch and beat two of the men that beat him in that losing streak. Unbeaten Cuban defector Hairon Socarras has the co-main event slot, but that doesn’t mean what it usually does. Socarras came over when he was 11 and doesn’t have the usual experience with the highly respected Cuban amateur boxing program.
Saturday, August 12th
Joseph Diaz (26-1, 14 KOs) v Jesus M Rojas (26-1-2, 19 KOs), featherweights & Damon Allen (15-0-1, 4 KOs) v Jonathan Navarro (14-0, 7 KOs), junior welterweights – Hollywood, California – Facebook Watch, 9 PM Eastern
This is the only real card with world level significance. Thankfully it is a damn good fight in the main event. 2012 US Olympian JoJo Diaz is not coming back soft from his competitive but clear title shot loss to Gary Russell Jr. Instead he is returning against the most underrated man in the division in Puerto Rican contender Jesus Rojas. Rojas had an excellent 2017, first upsetting unbeaten prospect Abraham Lopez in one sided fashion before stopping a real contender in Claudio Marrero later in the year to win a secondary title. Here both men compete for a slightly better version of that same secondary, WBA title in a bit of low key but outstanding matchmaking. The co-main event is compelling too. Both Allen and Navarro have been promoted as prospects by Golden Boy, but neither has looked like they are going to set the world on fire. In response, Golden Boy has set up a sort of prospect elimination match here between two unbeaten young fighters to sort it out. As good as this card is, however, the real story here is its broadcast medium. Facebook will the host of the evening on its Facebook Watch streaming platform. Golden Boy (in conjunction with Main Events) signed an experimental five show deal with the data aggregating giant and this is the first card that they will stream. I’m really interested to see how it pans out in terms of viewership.
