Mairis Briedis vs. Danie Venter & Arturs Kulikauskis vs. Sergei Ekimov RBR

A friend on Twitter just reminded me that Brieidis somehow managed to lose to Ivica Bacurin in a Bigger's Better tourney in 2011.

Mairis has come a long way in five years.

 

Mairis still doesn't have a ton of quality on his résumé yet, but you can tell by the dominant manner of victory over the best names he beat that he is special.

1) Charr 2) Venter 3) Suda 4) Abdoul 5) shot Danny Williams

All were stoppages except Cool Abdoul, whom Briedis shut out. He knocked Charr out cleanly and wiped the rest out very early.

 

Anybody know if the actual Russian card today was televised? Obviously the main boxing outlet for boxing on Russian TV (Match!) opted to go with the Latvian event, but this one is semi-notable. Maxim Vlasov was in the main event, taking on a 10-0-1 Uzbek prospect.

 

Would've been a smart move by Głowacki, had the WBO forced him to face Usyk. There are weak challengers at cruiser he could've feasted on to milk his reign, and that he can go after now to stay in the W column (though I'm not sure there is an easy path back to championship status, given that he would need to overcome the likes of the Lebedev-Ramírez winner, Makabu-Drozd winner, and Huck-Afolabi IV winner to get another belt)

As it happens, though, I believe he is defending against Steve Cunningham on the Algieri vs. Spence card.

 

That's for the WBO title.