[UPDATED] The Rest Of The Week Besides Timothy Bradley – Nate Campbell: ShoBox, Friday Night Fights, Fight Night Club, Assault In The Ring, GoFightLive

There are four, count ’em, four televised fight cards this week, plus one boxing doc’s debut. The biggest of the bunch is on Showtime Saturday, but we already covered the junior welterweight double-header featuring Timothy Bradley-Nate Campbell and Devon Alexander-Junior Witter. Normally I’d just hit the rest of the weekend’s fights in the Friday Quick Jabs column, but with one of the televised cards airing on Thursday, I gots no choice but to do it sooner. So here it is.

  • Fight Night Club, Versus/ringtv.com/Yahoo! Sports, Thursday. Two of the prospects who will be on the show, lightweight Luis Ramos and featherweight Charles Huerta, were on the debut of Fight Night Club. Ramos was the one I liked best, as he scored a nice KO and looked technically solid. Huerta was fun, too, maybe even more fun, but a little less technical. Doug Fischer has the scouting report on the other two, featherweight Ronny Rios and lightweight Carlos Molina, brother of 2008 Olympian Javier but not to be confused with the Friday Night Fights staple of the same name. Last time out, all the prospects were matched competitively if not ShoBox-dangerous style, so it was a good time. Did somebody say ShoBox?
  • ShoBox, Showtime, Friday. Exciting junior lightweight prospect Marvin Quintero returns to ShoBox AGAIN — it’s at least his third appearance — and I’m not complaining too much but surely there’s some other prospect who deserves a slot on the show, right? People jump on HBO for playing favorites with Golden Boy Promotions, but Gary Shaw, promoter of Quintero, just OWNS Showtime and that never gets as much attention. Anyway, Quintero’s in against lightweight Tyrone Harris, who’s been in tough and may or may not be more of a challenge for Quintero than Wes Ferguson, Quintero’s last ShoBox opponent. I suspect less. Antonio Tarver, remember, will be guest-commentating.
  • Friday Night Fights, ESPN2, Friday. Julio Diaz tries to make another comeback in a career that seems permanently like it’s in comeback mode, this time at junior welterweight. His opponent, Victor Manuel Cayo, has fought a couple trial horses I’m familiar with and he’s undefeated, but he’s never fought anyone on Diaz’ level. He’s a credible enough opponent under the circumstances. Always hard to tell what other fighters will be on the televised portion Friday Night Fights card, because they often diverge from the news releases the promoters give out, but if one of ’em is Carl Davis Drummond vs. Derric Rossy at heavyweight, I won’t mind, compared to what else is on the card. This isn’t the best slate of the FNF season. Eddie Chambers in studio off his big heavyweight win.
  • It’s not on television, which is too bad, but Saturday is a welterweight rematch between Delvin Rodriguez and Isaac Hlatshwayo, who fought last year to what I’ve seen repeatedly called an “entertaining draw.” They fought in Hlatshwayo’s homeland of South Africa last time, but now they’ll do it in Rodriguez’ backyard of Connecticut. Not sure why this wasn’t the FNF main event instead of what they’ve got going — I’m sure the promoters would have moved it to Friday for some TV money. [UPDATE: Maybe it’d been announced before and I just missed it, but since this was first published, a couple different media outlets have reported this card will be picked up by gofightlive.tv for $9.95. Might be worth that small price of admission.]
  • Assault in the Ring, Saturday, HBO. This documentary on the Luis Resto-Billy Collins scandal is getting good reviews, and with a similar tampered-gloves incident occurring this year (if not sooner) with Antonio Margarito, the time is ripe. I look forward to watching it, but only on replay. Bradley-Campbell/Alexander-Witter is on at the same time and no way I’m missing a nice live boxing event to watch a documentary about an old, awful boxing event.

About Tim Starks

Tim is the founder of The Queensberry Rules and co-founder of The Transnational Boxing Rankings Board (http://www.tbrb.org). He lives in Washington, D.C. He has written for the Guardian, Economist, New Republic, Chicago Tribune and more.

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