Ainiwaer Yilixiati vs. Mada Maugo

Thursday in Zhengzhou. For the vacant WBA super middleweight Asian title and WBC ABC title (second defense of Yilixiati).

The house fighter and incumbent ABC titlist, hailing from the far northwestern reaches of the People's Republic in Ürümqi, has been on my radar for a while, his best victories to date being a pair over Chaoqun Dong (who is reinventing himself at 154lb despite being ultra tall for the division, having debuted there last month with a dominant performance against Niwat Kongkan). The challenger flown in from Tanzania looks to be a glass cannon, whose most recognizable name opponent has been domestic rival Francis Cheka (best remembered getting crushed by Fedor Chudinov and Vijender Singh when he stepped up from his small pond to challenge stiff international competition) - by whom Maugo was defeated thrice, most recently by corner retirement and twice before that via MD.

 

@Somachenko I'm going to be relying on your clutch abilities here to sniff out details of whatever Chinese television channels (if any) have this one set to air, buddy.

 

Well, that was easy...turns out I don't actually need Somachenko to use his "very particular set of skills" in sleuthing out the 411, this one just required a 2-second image search on Google to find a very informative event poster:

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Card airing on CCTV5 at 7:30pm local time in Zhengzhou (which is 7:30am EST) - cool.

 

King Maugo Jr.'s last bout (versus Charles Misanjo, just a few weeks ago...) - his fourth match of 2018:

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Low-Key Boy living up to his name, relatively, with just one prior outing this year, versus Yevgeni Makhteienko in April:

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Man...the quality of even the upper echelon of domestic boxing scenes in most African countries is...pitiful. I had to force myself to watch a few rounds of Maugo vs. Misanjo, and it was a chore. So. Little. Technique.

Not that China has a particularly robust amateur program, depth of talent pool on which young pros can cut their teeth, or the world's best coaches or sparring available (compared with places like the US, UK, Japan, Russia, Cuba, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, or even the Philippines), but relatively speaking, when viewed side by side with a Tanzania - the difference shows.

Yilixiati gets hit too much to be thrown in with any top 15 super middles globally - but next to Maugo he's a ring wizard.

Non-zero chance that Maugo gets put to actual sleep. Prep the salts.

 

The undercard is four 6-rounders and one 10-round co-main event (Youli Dong vs. Adam Did Abdulhamid, for the WBO Asia Pacific Youth welterweight title, second defense of Dong)...so I'd presume CCTV5 is showing the whole card. I'd estimate Yilixiati vs. Maugo will start around 10am EST.

 

Second show?