Cruiserweight and Heavyweight thread.

Marcin Siwy takes on Kamil Sokolowski 2nd September in Poland.

Also Hardcore boxing/mma over in Russia have been putting on some interesting fights recently. A round robin of fighters such as Pavel Shulskiy, Gadji Navruzov, Vyacheslav Datsik, Islam Karimov, Vagab Vagabov and one of my favourites Dmitry Kudryashov all fighting each other.

Vyacheslav Datsik, who is scheduled to fight Alexander Emelianenko in September lost via TKO2 to Islam Karimov last night.

Pavel Shulskiy is set to to fight Vagab Vagabov who was last seen getting KO’d by the Russian Hammer, this coming Wednesday 17th August.

Dima is back September 24th vs Soslan Asbarov.

 

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James Wilson last fought in March 2019.
Since then, he has mainly spent his time training his 3 sons in martial arts.

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Curious to see if he still has his head into boxing

 

I see Ruiz-Ortiz has been removed from the BoxRec schedule.

Also, Wilder-Helenius has been taken off.

I wonder why?

Saturday's two heavyweight fights are still there.

 

Neither surprises me, and I have been telling everyone that there is no china whatsoever that Wilder will fight Helenius. None.

 

Evgeny Romanov having a heavyweight fight against someone named Vikapita Meroro on August 19. Shame, I really wanted to see the two greatest bridgerweights in HISTORY fight each other in that big Rivas-Romanov showdown.

 

Bootleg Shannon Briggs.

 

This fight I was so excited about now appears to be off. Not listed on Boxrec.

 

I just want Murat to be active ffs. Could be fighting cans I don’t care i just wanna see some monstrous left hooks

 

My guess?

Fury's retirement (if it sticks) would probably hand the WBC belt back to Wilder...

And I'm sure Helenius and Ruiz Jr would both be happy to be Wilder's first choice of voluntary opponent. So they will take no chances.

Of course, Fury has until August 26th to go back on his word (yet again) - so there's a chance these fights are getting cancelled for no good reason at all.

 

"Unforseen travel restrictions"! Spong has a rap sheet in the USA a mile long due to his love of exotic pets among other things...

Seems unlikely Hearn & Co. were unaware of all that.

Andrew "The Beast" Tabiti vs. James "The Beast" Wilson. The way things have gone with fight cancellations during the past 24 hours, I wouldn't be surprised if the fight gets axed because there's some obscure BBBoC regulation forbidding two fighters having the same nickname from fighting one another.

 

I suspect Helenius or Ruiz Jr will fight Wilder for the WBC title because I suspect the WBC title will revert to Wilder after August 26th (this assumes, of course, that Fury will stay retired through August 26th...which he may not)

 

Victor Vykhryst's (9-0, 7KOs) planned August 13th fight in Hamburg, Germany against journeyman Adnan Redžović (21-6) was cancelled when Redžović withdrew before the fight.

Thankfully, the 8 round fight between unbeaten 9-0 prospect Igor Shevadzutskiy and Kevin "Kingpin" Johnson (35-20-1) on the same card did take place with Shevadzutskiy, unsuprisingly, winning by unanimous decision. No word on whether or not Johnson bothered to throw any punches.

 

Top Rank has apparently signed Arslanbek Makhmudov to a multi-year co-promotional contract (Makhmudov will continue to be represented by Camille Estephan's "Eye of the Tiger" outfit).

This should be a game-changer for Makh who has been the very definition of a "High-Risk / Low-Reward" fighter up until this point. Signinh with Top Rank won't make him any less-risk, but Top Rank should be able to provide the larger purses necessary to attract more meaningful fights. With Parker fighting Joyce, Hrgovic fighting Zhang, Joshua fighting Usyk, and the WBC title likely returning to Wilder's hands - all in the next few weeks - it will be interesting to see how quickly things might begin to happen for Makh.

I'm wondering if this announcement might also mean that Tyson Fury's (latest) retirement is for real. That is to say that perhaps Makhmudov's signing is intended to fill a vacancy in Top Rank's heavyweight stable of fighters. Or not. We'll have to see.

 

Romanov has (AFAIK) done all his fighting out of Russia. Circumstances being what they are right now, this is going to heavily restrict the pool of available opponents for him. Not ideal, since Romanov is already 37.

 

According to Boxrec he's fighting a 21-2-1 (18 KOs) fighter.

Unfortunately, that opponent - Carlouse Welch - is all of 42 years-old and the most recognizable name on his resume is Epifanio Mendoza - who Welch fought in 2019. He beat Mendoza via UD - and in doing so became one of only a very few fighters in the past decade who have fought Mendoza and failed to stop him. Most of Welch's other fights in the past several years have been against local fighters in Colombia.

He's not likely to last two minutes against Gassiev.