Insanity wolf supports Round and Round, the column where we discuss fights in the works. Besides the people in the headline, we have the latest on fights involving the likes of Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Humberto Soto, Paul Williams, Manny Pacquiao and others.
Round And Round
Assuming Manny Pacquiao gets by Shane Mosley in a May welterweight fight, his promoter Bob Arum is talking about a November match-up with Juan Manuel Marquez in the event Floyd Mayweather is unavailable. I support this. I sure do hope, though, that Pacquiao’s team sees fit to make the fight at 140. Remember, Pacquiao often has to put on weight to be a welter. This fight is appealing with that caveat. Without it, it’s Pacquiao beating up a man he’s forced to come up excessively in weight — a weight where Marquez has already proven ineffective. Pacquiao still would be making Marquez come up from lightweight at 140 — that’s plenty advantage.
It’s starting to feel like heavyweight David Haye will be fighting Alexander Povetkin May 21. It’s easy enough to make a joke about this being a fight between people who have ducked division champ Wladimir Klitschko. But it’s also the case that it’s a pretty good fight. Yeah, but still, Haye is lame: He doesn’t have a clue what people actually think about him if he thinks he’d be criticized for fighting Vitali Klitschko, as he recently claimed.
Denied a shot at Marcos Maidana by his upcoming bout with Erik Morales, Devon Alexander still isn’t settling for an easy fight: He and his team is asking for Lucas Matthysse next, and it looks like they’ll get him. Alexander trainer Kevin Cunningham and Matthysse trainer Grabriel Sarmiento both want the bout. Bless those two men. They are all about putting their guys in tough.
Speaking of, Paul Williams’ team is saying they won’t be putting him in against a “softie” coming off his devastating knockout loss in November. They want a fight in April, but it might move to June. I admire the bravery, but I question the wisdom. Meanwhile, twice-Williams foe Carlos Quintana wants to move up to middleweight to face the man who vanquished Williams, Sergio Martinez. Uh, no.
Luis Concepcion, fresh off getting gored by a bull in his ass (this is not a joke or a lie), is fighting April 2 against Hernan Marquez. It’s a worthy junior flyweight bout.
At cruiserweight, Guillermo Jones will be doing battle with Yoan Pablo Hernandez in May, it looks like (good bout), while Marco Huck will be fighting Giacobbe Fragomeni in April (not a good bout). It looks like this cruiserweight Super Six is just never going to happen.
A couple Mexican Top Rank fighters are going to have some bouts in March prior to their important match-ups this summer. Middleweight Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. is slated to fight Michael Medina as a tune-up for his bout with Sebastian Zbik, while lightweight Humberto Soto will rematch Fidel Monterrosa in advance of his planned rematch with Urbano Antillon. That’s fine. I just hope in particular that Soto’s bout with Antillon isn’t delayed in any way by it.
Junior featherweight Steve Molitor, being discussed as a potential next opponent for Nonito Donaire (ugh), will in the meantime take on Takalani Ndlovu on March 26.
Mark Melligen said before this weekend he wanted Alfonso Gomez if he came out victorious, and since he did, I’d expect we get that welterweight match-up. I’m not a huge fan of either man, but they both fight hard and I think their styles would sync really well, I bet.
The Garth Wood-Anthony Mundine middleweight rematch is booked for April 13, and if Mundine can’t get revenge, that show almost certainly is entirely over.
ESPN2 has three excellent bouts lined up in March, April and May. One features talented young light heavyweights Ismayl Sillakh against Yordanis Despaigne, on March 4. The next is a pure brawl between junior welterweights Ivan Popoca and Ruslan Provodnikov on April 15. The third is a crossroads bout on May 13 between junior welterweights Kendall Holt and Julio Diaz.
Our own Gautham Nagesh has reported that Vernon Paris and Holt could soon meet, or that Holt could face Tim Coleman. Assuming Holt gets by Diaz and Paris overcomes Mike Alvarado on April 16 on Showtime (big assumptions), I honestly can’t think of why it shouldn’t happen — and Holt-Coleman is pretty interesting, too.
(Round and Round sources: BoxingScene; ESPN; Fightnews; RingTV; Stiff Jab)
