Predictions for the card on February 22nd?

Well if your prediction comes true on this and emphasis on IF then you will be rightly commended. If Shakur is as good as I think, it will take a special fighter to beat him and to my mind that is not Floyd Schofield. In fact who do you think will win when we hopefully get Tank vs Shakur later this year?

 

I am not counting out Joe Parker and picking him to win if he follows the strategy to make it a technical boxing fight. I think Dubois may be overconfident.

 

Bivol SD
Parker TKO 11
Sheeraz TKO 6
Madrimov KO 7
Stevenson TKO 5
Zhang KO 2
Buatsi SD

 

Glad you coming around sir .... I always had faith in Hamzah .. him being out in L.A has helped alot , and in the last 2 years I hear he gives most of his sparring partners a good beating , but when he first went to L.A they were beating him up lol ..

He is a extremely dedicated fighter , and he will get his reward on Feb 22nd ..

 

Bivol close decision
Dubois close decision
Sheeraz KO/TKO
Ortiz close decision
Stevenson wide decision
Kabayel close decision
Buatsi close decision

 

My (non confident) picks are:

Bivol gets controversial MD setting up rematch

Parker defeats Dubois, possibly by late KO

Ortiz squeaks by Madrimov, getting dropped in back n forth match

Kabayel stops Zhang in the late going. May have issues early, but when Zhang wears out he Makhmudovs him.

Sheeraz gets hurt badly at some point but rallies to defeat Adames

Smith upsets Buatsi, maybe by KO

Stephenson wins boring decision


Honestly though, I don’t really know. So yeah - great card

 

Two fighters got them all, one fighter missed them all. Can you guess who?

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Alright, fight week's here. Time to brush up on the predictions.

Buatsi vs. Smith - This is one I'm hesitant to make a solid prediction for. I don't think either are necessarily more than just "good", but I think Smith is the better of the two. If he comes with the will to win I think he should pull it off. There's a big question mark on if that'll be the case though, the dude is coming off of a bad loss to Beterbiev, so there's a good chance he got a lot of that beaten out of him. I don't know honestly, but I'll stick with picking Smith by KO. I reserve the right to complain about how this one would have gone different if Smith actually showed up though

Kabayel vs. Zhang - Still sticking with Zhang by KO. I like Kabayel and he's definitely a skilled boxer, but I feel like his last couple of opponents have been very flattering. Not to say he isn't good, he put on a pretty damn good performance against Chisora after all, and even though that was a long time ago now, Chisora's still very much a "separating the men from the boys" level of fighter so something like that means something. Still, he got tagged a fair bit early on in those recent fights, and I just can't get over how hard he got rocked when a very much on the verge of being stopped himself Smakici countered him. He showed great recovery skills after that, sure, but Zhang's power is a whole different beast and sneaky counters are his bread and butter. I've backed Big Bang in every one of his fights since I became a fan, and even the one time he disappointed me he still managed to knock the other guy down twice. I feel certain Kabayel will taste the canvas like Parker did, and if he can get up his chances may increase due to a tendency of Zhang's I've noticed, where he seems to be unable to pull the trigger and finish a wounded opponent. That's a mighty tall order though, so I'm gonna go with Zhang by KO 3-5.

Ortiz vs. Madrimov - I've gone back and forth on this one a fair bit, and I'll admit when I made my initial Madrimov KO prediction, it was partly motivated by my disappointment in how Ortiz performed against Bohachuk. I backed him to stop Bohachuk around the mid rounds, but not only did he never come close to that, he got knocked down twice himself on the way to a points win that I felt could've gone either way, if only by a point. No, they weren't big knockdowns where he was on the verge of being stopped or anything, but they were genuine all the same. I dunno, the fight gave me the impression that Ortiz isn't super comfortable at this weight, and that his power wasn't all that good here either. On the other hand, Madrimov got rocked pretty damn good when he finally opened up against Crawford, so it's not like Ortiz can't hurt him, and he'll for sure be fighting with a more pressure focused style than Crawford was. Still though, I'm kinda leaning more toward picking Madrimov, though I'm thinking decision now. Like most of the fights on this card though, I ain't a hundred percent confident in that pick.

Adames vs. Sheeraz - This is prolly the one I have the most confidence in picking, and it's Sheeraz by KO. I don't think it'll be quite as easy have some have been predicting because Adames is a pretty resilient dude who can pack a mean punch himself. And yeah, I think Sheeraz has been a bit over hyped, but not in the sense that there's no promise there or anything, just in the sense I've felt it was a bit premature. He's definitely got a good skillset that's continued to grow and has good power to go along with it. On top of that, he'll bringing in advantages in height and reach. Put all that together with Adames' tendency to underperform and I just don't think he'll be retaining the title this Saturday.

Stevenson vs. Schofield - Ain't happening unfortunately. I still think that Stevenson would have won, but I don't believe Schofield would have let it be a boring match. He would have taken the fight to him and made him turn in his first good performance in awhile to earn that W. Hopefully it can be done at a later date. Meantime, if they ain't dropping Stevenson from the card, I'm hoping they can get a decent replacement. Even if they can't though, I'd still prefer that to the lame ass concert before the main event getting extended. Ideally they'd just have the main event start sooner, but we know that ain't happening

Dubois vs. Parker - When it comes to these two, I'm impressed that they've managed to bounce back from bad losses so well, but I'm also of the mind neither has really earned the amount of hype that's come with their win streaks. Don't get me wrong, winning as the consistent underdog is pretty damn special no matter how you slice it, and both are good fighters who should still be counted in the current top ten no matter how the fight lands, but this will be the one that really determines if all the hype was warranted or not. Dubois bounced back from a one sided loss to Usyk, but he did it against come forward guys who play right into his style, and even in one of those instances he was behind on the cards when the fight got stopped. Parker bounced back from the Joyce loss with points victories over big punchers, but neither of them really brought the fight to him, and even then he still hit the canvas twice in one fight. Dubois will be fighting a guy who won't try to knock him out from the first bell and as a result won't be so prone to walk into his punches and gas out by the midway point, and Parker will be fighting a guy that will bring pressure as well as power. I'm not gonna make a really solid prediction on this one, but I will say that I'm hoping Parker wins this, since the winner is very likely to be fighting Usyk and it'd be nice to see him close out his career with a couple of names he didn't have to rematch. If Dubois wins though, I say Usyk's team oughta just say **** it and make his final match be a dual retirement fight with Chisora, cause why not keep the trend going at that point

Beterbiev vs. Bivol - Still backing Bivol on points. A lot of folks had Bivol winning the first fight, and I was one of them but I didn't have a problem with Beterbiev getting the nod, it was very much a one point either way or draw type of fight, in my opinion. Still though, I don't think Beterbiev can improve much on that performance much at this point in his career. Not to take away from his win, because even a close win against Bivol is still mighty impressive, but Bivol's the one who has more room for improvement going off the first fight. I still maintain that fight was lost in the seventh round, when Bivol forgot his discipline, got greedy and tried to throw one punch too many and as a result got hit clean with a punch that had him fighting off the back foot more often than not from that point. Having said that, Beterbiev's power is the great equalizer and, scoring punches or not, he was wearing Bivol down to a point that he didn't bring much to the fight in the closing rounds. But like I said, I'm sticking with my initial thought and predicting Bivol will correct the mistakes of the first fight on the way to a decision win.

Honestly though, any of these fights swinging the other way wouldn't surprise me one damn bit. So many good fights that can go either way. Only ones I'd feel secure in predicting are the Alakel and Almaayouf fights, and even in the latter case I still wouldn't be 100% sure... though uh, not for the same reason as the rest of these fights

Damned shame about one of the fights falling through, but at least it wasn't one of the really big ones. Says a lot about this event that one title fight being dropped hasn't exponentially affected the quality of the card as a whole. For a lot of shows even that would be a big blow, but for this one it's just a slight inconvenience. Almost doesn't even feel real, but it's really happening and it's just a few days away now. Saturday cannot get here soon enough!

Also jeez that turned out bigger than I thought. I didn't mean to write an essay. I have a tendency to be wordy anyways, but I guess so many fights on one card just really brought it out of me

 

I've got....

Beterbiev
Dubois
Ortiz
Sheeraz
Buatsi
Zhang
Stevenson

Apart from Stevenson alot of these fights are very debatable though which is a good thing.

 

Not too disappointed with this - considering I also picked Parker against Bakole in the other thread. Wasn’t confident in any of them, but yeah - not too bad

 

And this is why I ain't a gambling man

All the same, was one hell of a fight night. Tons of excitement and close fights. Really lived up to the hype and then some