Cruiserweight and Heavyweight thread.

Franklin has never had his chin tested. The hardest hitte he's faced is Forrest - who has ordinary power.

Whyte has been in with much heavier-handed opposition.

Franklin has been sporadically posting lots of stuff on his Instagram that are very negative about the sport, most of which he quickly deletes. I suspect he's completely fed up with the business side of the sport and Dmitry Salita in particular and is just looking to cash out and try to get on with his life. I think Whyte puts him away like DuBois put away Trevor Bryan.

Whyte TKO in 4.

 

Well Wardley v. Gorman could be competitive, anyhow.

 

Yeah, I remember that - they started around 2015/2016. He banished himself to Canada for a couple of years fighting relative nobodies - because he had trouble getting a license to box in the states. Since returning from frozen north he's been fighting opponents who are pretty big punchers, so he is definitely taking chances with his long-term wellbeing.

 

As of now he's still listed on Top Rank's website.

It probably doesn't help that he's managed by David McWater because McWater currently manages 60 (!) fighters and, again, Sonny is not getting much of a look.

 

Daniel DuBois will take on Kevin Lerena in a 12 round fight on the main card of the December 3rd Fury v. Chisora 3 matchup.

Lerena made the step up from cruiserweight this year. He has managed to stop Bogdan Dinu in 4 rounds in March and win a wide UD over Mariusz Wach in September. But you'd expect a good HW in his prime to do both those things.

At 6' 1" he'll be giving up considerable size to DuBois.

 

Moses Johnson secured a Majority Decision victory (77-75, 77-75, 76-76) over Elvia Garcia in there 8 round Shobox fight this evening. The fight was pretty entertaining and the opponents were well-matched, but it seemed to me like Garcia was landing the heavier shots throughout the fight (he almost had Johnson down on a couple of occasions) and Johnson was visibly tired over the last couple of rounds. But in any case, Johnson moves to 9-0-1 (7 KOs) and Garcia loses his zero (12-1, 9 KOs).

Johnson was at 259 lbs for this fight - and that's clearly about 20 lbs too many. Garcia weighed in somewhere in the low 230s but had the look of a man who had recently lost quite a bit of weight.

 

Franklin's shot is if he comes in prepared while Whyte, fresh off a career high payday and loss, does not.

 

Yes, but I don't think that that will happen. Whyte will probably not want to disgrace himself in front of tens of thousands of his countrymen at Wembley and I think Franklin has been giving off signals the past couple of years indicating he wants out of the sport. Their ambitions are mutually-compatible.

I'm very confident that Whyte slugs him out of there in just a few rounds.

 

I agree. The chances are very low

 

Torrez Jr's opponent will apparently be Ahmed Samir Hefny.

The 6' 2" 38 year-old Hefny has a 13-2 record with 5 KOs. Most of those victories were against poor opponents and his career includes an 8 year hiatus from boxing. Dacarree Scott accounted for one of his two losses by way of a SD when the two fought in January. According to Scott, Hefny stayed in the fight by getting on his bicycle and staying there.

Perhaps Hefny will see the 2nd round in this fight, but it's difficult seeing him accomplishing more than that. He's not more than a small step up from Torrez Jr's criminally-overmatched prior opponents.

 

Finally had the chance to sit through Joyce/Parker, helluva HW fight.

Joyce is a bad, bad man. He’s probably the #3 HW in the world behind Usyk and Fury. I don’t know what the **** he’s using for a chin.

And this was one of Parker’s better performances. He had a good gameplan, he showed more grit and determenation than he did in in his most previous fights, he knew when to pick his shots, when to be on defence and on offence. But when you keep landing your best shots yet you’re the one getting hurt, being pushed around, you can’t help but be discouraged and worn down.

Kudos to both men.

 

It was a good fight - and I agree 100% about Joyce.

But I can't help thinking that Joseph Parker should have fought Joe Joyce like he fought Anthony Joshua and fought Anthony Joshua like he fought Joe Joyce.

 

And...he's done it!

Despite looking more "Dough Boy" than "Del Boy", Robert Simms Jr (12-3-1, 3 KOs) prevailed over James KcKenzie Morrison (20-1-2, 18 KOs) on the Triller Card on Saturday night. I don't have a lot of details but from what I've read/seen in "FightNews" Simms Jr showed good defense, a good jab and a great chin. It also appears his prediction that he would weigh in at 235 lbs proved very optimistic.

The fight was shortened from 10 rounds to 8 rounds. That probably didn't hurt Simms Jr. Nothing Simms Jr connected with probably hurt Morrisson, either, but Simms Jr is now holding the WBC USNBC belt.

As I suggested - Simms Jr can be a difficult opponent for anything less than contender-level opposition. I've never heard of the WBC USNBC belt before, but it wouldn't be shocking if it lands Simms Jr in the top-15 of the WBC HW rankings.

 

Frazier Clarke (3-0) will face Kamil Sokolowski (11-26-3) in an 8 round fight on the November 12th Jonas vs. DiCaire card in Manchester, UK.

Reasonably-ambitious choice of opponent for Clarke's 4th fight. While Soklolowski has always proven a difficult opponent to-date, he's now 36 1/2 years-old and has considerable mileage on his clock and I think that Clarke can probably stop him inside the distance.

 

Finally, the Morrison legacy tour is over.