Titleholders Jose Uzcategui and Jerwin Ancajas return against soft touches tomorrow night on ESPN+.
I’m going to keep this brief and get pretty negative here because this show doesn’t deserve anything else, but I do want to point out first that shows like this are the exception rather than the rule. The Top Rank and ESPN partnership has led to consistent quality programming. I don’t know what went wrong here, but I trust they will return to putting on compelling fights after this little side attraction tucked away on a Friday night on ESPN+.
With the pleasantries out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks. This card is bad. In the main event, super middleweight titleholder Jose Uzcategui (27-2, 23 KOs), a really good fighter coming off a dominant win over longtime top contender Andre Dirrell, is fighting Ezequiel Osvaldo Maderna (26-4, 16 KOs) in a non-title contest. Maderna is not a world level fighter. If we are being generous we could point out that five years ago Maderna put on reasonably respectful performances in losses to Thomas Oosthuizen and Edwin Rodriguez, but that is all he has. Uzcategui is more dangerous than either of those men ever were, Maderna lost to them clear anyway, and time has not been kind to the Argentinian since. Artur Beterbiev destroyed him quickly in 2016 and just last year the Argentinian lost to a domestic level journeyman back home. If this was an ESPN+ prelim on a larger Top Rank on ESPN card, I wouldn’t bat an eye. As a main event though? It’s trash. It just is.
The co-main event isn’t as bad, but it is still isn’t good. Super flyweight titleholder Jerwin Ancajas (30-1-1, 20 KOs) is an awesome talent. He is one of the best fighters in one of the best weight classes in the whole of the sport. While he hasn’t faced the absolute top of the division yet, the 26 year old has been completely dominant on the level below that. Alejandro Santiago Barrios (16-2-4, 7 KOs) has not been. We can dismiss Barrios’s losses as they came as a teenager, but three of his draws are notable. Two of them were against Puerto Rican fringe contender Jose Martinez on Golden Boy ESPN shows while the third came against another fringe contender in Antonio Nieves. The second Martinez draw was his most recent fight from March. Barrios is a respectable fighter. He’s only 22 and he has gotten draw cards three times against two fringe top twenty five guys. There is nothing wrong with his career, but how it qualifies him to be in with a dynamic world level titleholder like Jerwin Ancajas is a head scratching question. It doesn’t. He isn’t qualified. I could buy this is a stay busy co-main event for Ancajas to a big time headliner without too much of an issue, but instead it is a mediocre co-main event supporting a terrible headlining fight.
Top Rank on ESPN+ is delivering a dud tomorrow night. It doesn’t even bother to begin until 10:30 PM Eastern either. A second prelim broadcast, also on ESPN+, begins earlier at 7:30. According to Dan Rafael’s schedule, the likes of Genesis Servania, Rico Ramos, and Joshua Greer Jr are set to be in action. They aren’t on boxrec for some reason, but I trust Rafael to have his schedule right. This is doubly true given that the fights are set to air on his network.
