French card on March twelfth...

Lots of au fait names on the card, and seeing them all staying busy is encouraging - but unfortunately they are, to a man, all engaged in mismatches that won't provide them very much forward momentum.

Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam, Jean Pierre Bauwens, Igor Mikhalkin, Cedric Vitu & Yvan Mendy should all be taking bigger steps up than what they have in store on this MK Events card @ Marcel Cerdan Palace. In some cases, the opponents represent a massively regressive step.

HNN has been decommissioned for nine months following a grueling loss to Lemieux, so fair enough him piddling about with Gambian-British journeyman Patrick Mendy. HNN will at least get some rounds in to shake off some rust, as Mendy is generally durable (Callum Smith blowout notwithstanding). He fought gamely with Dmitry Chudinov and never went down - and even forced a draw. Arif Magomedov and Patrick Nielsen both put him on the canvas but failed to keep him there.

Bauwens gets a pass for coming off an L, too - and to be fair Petitjean despite his shoddy record has beaten some decent names and is probably top of the heap domestically @ 140lbs...and Junior is moving up in wight.

Vitu, however - after claiming the Euro title from unbeaten Fiordigiglio and defending against El Tigre de Benidorm - is s****ing the bottom of the barrel with Ruben Varon, a Fiordigiglio kayo victim whose record may look better than Santos' on paper but whose actual h2h value is much less than his countryman's. Varon was shut out by Sturm and comfortably outpointed by Macklin (on an off night, looking terrible) in his two biggest steps up. Hopefully after this he rights the ship and his reign doesn't continue to devolve in this direction.

Mikhalkin has no excuse to be facing Patrick Bois at this stage, given the caliber of his last few opponents. He is also on the wrong side of 30 and fought just once each in 2013 and 2014 (and twice in 2015), so time is a-wasting...

Mendy just upset LUKE FREAKING CAMPBELL. So he follows up on that with the 19-11-1 (5) Samir Kasmi? atsch Seriously?

I'll still watch, if possible, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cannon fodder crew fail to bag a single round between them.

 

Well, it wasn't like Mendy was some bum - it was just that Campbell was so hyped.

 

Mundo Smith really is a phenom. :think Patrick Mendy has both toughness & instincts/knack for survival in spades, and yet he got rag-dolled like nothing inside two bells.

HNN can display hand speed and punching accuracy not dissimilar to Smith's when he puts his mind to it, but he is rarely sustains this kind of aggression:

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You weren't still impressed by him against Biosse, Sjekloca, or Rebrasse? Boxed well and barely lost a round, innit?

 

Safe to say if any of the five faves lose, their career is in deep doodoo? :think

 

There is one somewhat competitive bit of matchmaking on the bill - a crossroads eight-rounder between Hugo Kasperski (who just lost a bid for Mikhalkin's light heavyweight Euro title in October) and Hakim Zoulikha (whose schedule lately has been rough - and does include a loss to Patrick Bois, whom I've maligned as Mikhalkin's next defense - but styles make fights & Zoulikha's work rate, shifting/stance-switching, and willingness to stay inside and comfortably roll with punches he can't deflect off his arms while attacking in bursts from a shell could trouble Kasperski, whose approach is very loose and full of defensive holes.

 

:arran

 

Samir Kasmi and Patrick Mendy are 16/1 underdogs against Yvan Mendy and HNN respectively. :!:

Petitjean, Bois, and Varon will likely be a little closer, but my guess would be not in excess of 10/1.

 

Yeah, crazy.

We're going on a decade now since it came out, but I was really impressed by Jean-Pierre Martins' cameo depiction of Cerdan in La Vie en Rose, the biopic of his paramour Édith Piaf. I had kind of hoped they might use him for, if maybe not a spin-off with the same production team involved (since that movie was really good) maybe a standalone feature on Cerdan, which probably deserves to be made. He's now in his mid-forties, though - probably an uphill climb playing an elite boxer that died at 33. :!: