A strange week on the boxing calendar, with a not-quite-HBO-level HBO show and a whole bunch of lesser stuff, almost all of it on Saturday. Our video this week is some oddly beautiful and appropriately soundtracked slow motion footage of pitch invaders avoiding security guards before a Polish football match. Boxing’s own pitch invasion incident, the fan man, has got nothing on that. To the fights!
- Thomas Dulorme vs. Luis Carlos Abregu, Saturday, HBO, Verona N.Y. HBO serves up another prospect-oriented card from upstate New York. It’s strange seeing match-ups of this level on HBO, but I suppose it’s better than no boxing at all. It’s certainly better than the general standard on ShoBox this year. The headlining bout pits Puerto Rican welterweight prospect Thomas Dulorme (16-0) against Argentina’s Luis Carlos Abregu (33-1). The Argentine is a tough cookie, but I’m not convinced he’ll be able to hang with Dulorme, a serious power puncher already being talked about as the successor to Miguel Cotto and Felix Trinidad. Abregu was open to Timothy Bradley’s left hook when they fought back in 2010, so I suspect that he’ll eat Dulorme’s straight left once the southpaw Boricua dials it in. And I don’t think Abregu will hang around for much longer once that happens. Underneath that bout is a lightweight fight between Mexicans Miguel Vazquez (31-3) and Marvin Quintero (25-3). I don’t see Quintero, another southpaw, beating Vazquez, the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board’s number two and one of the craftiest in the biz. Probably the most exciting and evenly matched fight of the night pits Californian junior welterweight prospects Karim Mayfield (16-0-1) and Mauricio Herrera (18-2) against one another. Mayfield, who at 31 is kind of old for a prospect, has been slowly stepping up his level of competition and Herrera figures to be a real test. Though he doesn’t hit that hard or shine in any aspect of the game in particular, Herrera is as tenacious as all get out. He’s repeatedly upset opponents, like Ruslan Provodnikov, who have been favoured to beat him and lost in a hell of a war against the much larger Mike Alvarado last time out. He’s going to be all up in Mayfield’s grill all night, absorbing and smothering the big bombs that Mayfield likes to throw. We don’t yet know how Mayfield will deal with that kind of pressure and it’ll be fun to find out.
- Alejandro Lopez vs. Taklani Ndlovu, Saturday, Azteca America, El Paso. Junior featherweight Alejandro Lopez (23-2), who handily upset Teon Kennedy over a year ago, finally gets another relatively high profile fight, against South Africa’s Taklani Ndlovu (33-7). Lopez, a stand-up boxer, has probably caught “The Panther” at a good time, too, after a tough win over the limited Giovanni Caro and a loss to compatriot Jeffrey Mathebula. Ndlovu isn’t afraid to mix it up, throwing the weird-looking, choppy punches that seem to be a South African trademark. Whether the shorter Lopez can get in range and then fire punches down the middle of Ndlovu’s combinations will be the question of the fight.
- Rafael Marquez vs. Cristian Mijares, Saturday, Mexico City. More Mexican on Mexican violence here, between veteran junior featherweight Rafael Marquez (41-7) and Chrisitian Mijares (46-6-2), who has a few miles on the clock himself. Mijares is undefeated since 2009, though against unspectacular opposition, while Marquez has at least challenged himself sporadically, losing against elite-level competition. Mijares is a southpaw mover, while Marquez, like his big bro Juan-Manuel, is an well drilled, orthodox aggression machine. I honestly don’t know who’s going to win. Marquez is not what he once was and Mijares isn’t spectacular. His name is in the conversation for Nonito Donaire fairly often though. Let’s hope it’s only a conversation.
- The Rest. Wednesday brings one of Lou Dibella’s Broadway Boxing cards from New York, featuring junior welterweight prospect Gabriel Bracero (19-1) and cruiserweight “Irish” Seanie Monaghan (15-0)… It’s a big week for the Cano family, with Pablo Cesar’s brother Ivan (21-4) facing undefeated French Canadian junior welterweight prospect Dierry Jean (22-0) in Quebec Friday… Saturday brings a Fox Deportes card featuring Jorge Linares conqueror and strangely named Mexican Sergio Thompson (24-2) against Luis Armando Juarez (16-5-2) in a junior lightweight bout. One of the Kameda bros is also fighting… The same night, TeleFutura broadcasts junior lightweight veterans Rocky Juarez (28-10-1) and Antonio Escalante (28-4). It’s really hard to care about Juarez anymore… New York welterweight prospect and former Olympian Sadam Ali (15-0) headlines an Integrated Sports PPV from Brooklyn Saturday. When it rains boxing in Brooklyn, it pours… Wealth TV continues its strange involvement in televised boxing by showing a Dominick Guinn (34-9-1) fight. Getting to see one of the worst tattoos in boxing should be worth the price of admission… Still Saturday, Tokyo plays hosts to a fight between the world’s number two junior lightweight, Takahiro Aoh (23-2-1) and his Mexican challenger Gamaliel Diaz (36-9-2), who’s been on a winning streak lately… To round out this lengthy “the rest," locally popular Virginia junior middleweight Jimmy Lange (38-4-2) fights Tony Jeter (14-3-1) at home in Fairfax Saturday.
