It won’t take long.
Three fights, three mismatches. That is all really I need to write as a preview for Saturday night’s PPV undercard. The main event is an amazing showdown between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury for the lineal heavyweight championship, of course, but the fights that come before it are something else entirely. Let’s look at them one by one:
Jarrett Hurd (22-0, 15 KOs) v Jason Welborn (24-6, 7 KOs), WBA & IBF junior middleweight titles
Jarrett Hurd is the best junior middleweight on the planet and is a unified titleholder. He is coming off three consecutive awesome performances in wins against Tony Harrison, Austin Trout, and Erislandy Lara. He is also coming off shoulder surgery and needs a test fight. I get that. Trial opponent Jason Welborn most recently pulled off a pair of hyper narrow split decision wins over a middling British domestic level opponent in Tammy Langford. He also lost to a 18-96-8 opponent just two years ago. I am not sure Jarrett Hurd even needs that shoulder physically attached to his body to win this fight, let alone fully healthy.
Luis Ortiz (29-1, 25 KOs) v Travis Kauffman (32-2, 23 KOs), heavyweights
Cuban elite heavyweight Luis Ortiz was unquestionably one of the most avoided fighters in the sport prior to his title opportunity against Deontay Wilder in March. King Kong proved his mettle too by surviving an early knockdown to nearly rally for a finish of his own before finally succumbing to Wilder’s freakish power late in the fight. He also has nice wins over Bryant Jennings and Tony Thompson. Travis Kauffman needed a generous decision to “win” against journeyman after surviving a first round disaster last time out. He also lost to a 45 year old Amir Mansour before that and somehow damn near lost a fight to the 2015 version of Chris Arreola. Kauffman not a world class guy and Luis Ortiz very much is. This will end whenever King Kong wants it to be over.
Joe Joyce (6-0, 6 KOs) v Joe Hanks (23-2, 15 KOs), heavyweights
British former amateur star Joe Joyce will be a new face for America audiences to open the show. Most observers thought “The Juggernaut” deserved the win over Frenchman Tony Yoka in the Rio Olympic super heavyweight finals, but unfortunately the decision went the other way. At 33, the plan is to move Joyce quickly which is why he is being showcased here. The Juggernaut is a fun watch too as an aggressive, pressure oriented heavyweight. That isn’t a style that usually appears in the sport’s largest weight class. Joe Hanks is… a man they found to get in the ring with Joe Joyce. He has won two professional boxing matches since 2012. He has lost at a level well below this one. He isn’t a notably absurd opponent for a prospect in his seventh pro fight, but the fact that this is being featured on a major PPV undercard is… uh… bad.
That’s it. We have three giant mismatches that realistically could all end in first round knockouts. Thankfully Adonis Stevenson and Oleksandr Gvozdyk are together in an excellent light heavyweight title matchup beforehand for our sanity’s sake, but once the pay wall goes up the quality of fights is going to free fall until the highly anticipated main event. Even by the historically low standards of a PPV undercard, this is a poor one. When the undercard for Canelo-GGG 2 ended very quickly, HBO and Golden Boy had no plan for it and had to fill a ton of time awkwardly on air. Let’s hope PBC and Showtime have learned from that as they are setting themselves up for the same thing here.
