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In boxing, it never rains but it pours. Last weekend was dead. There were no fights of major significance. Tomorrow (Saturday, April 9) all three leading networks – Showtime, ESPN, and DAZN – have compelling offerings and they will be going to head-to-head.
The Showtime tripleheader, which will air from the Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas, has a central theme. All six fighters on the TV portion of the card campaign in the 154-pound division. And judging by the prevailing odds, all three bouts will be competitive. (Kudos to the fan-friendly matchmaker.)
A bout between southpaws Erickson Lubin (24-1, 17 KOs) vs. Sebastian Fundora (18-0-1, 12 KOs) tops the bill. It’s being packaged as a WBC interim title fight with the winner theoretically poised to get the next shot at the winner of the May 14 match between Jermell Charlo and Brian Castano.
Lubin will be rooting for Charlo. He would love to get another crack at the man that saddled him with his lone defeat. Charlo knocked him out in the opening round with one punch, a picture-perfect right hand that brought a shocking conclusion to what had been a feeling-out round.
Since that mishap in 2017, Lubin, 26, has won six straight. He will dress as the favorite vs. Sebastian Fundora who has attracted early money, depressing the odds to 3/2.
Fundora, like Lubin a native Floridian, has been living and training in Coachella, CA, but moved his camp to Las Vegas for this bout. He stands six-foot-six, hence his nickname, “The Towering Inferno.”
Lubin vs. Fundora will be preceded by a 10-round match between Sergio Garcia (33-1, 14 KOs) and Tony Harrison (28-3-1, 21 KOs). Garcia, a 29-year-old Spaniard, will be looking to rebound from his lone defeat which he suffered at the hands of Fundora in what was his U.S. debut.
The oddsmakers like his chances. He opened a 5/2 favorite over Detroit’s Harrison, a third-generation prizefighter who briefly held the WBC version of this belt. (Old-timers will remember Harrison’s grandfather Henry Hank, a hard-punching middleweight who appeared numerous times on television during the early 1960s.)
The opening bout of the telecast pits Bryant Perrella (17-3-1, 14 KOs) against Kevin Zambrano (14-0, 9 KOs).
Perrella, a 33-year-old southpaw from Fort Myers, Florida, is better than his record. In his most memorable fight, he out-boxed Abel Ramos for nine rounds only to unravel in the final minute of the contest and get stopped with one second remaining in the bout. In his last outing, he battled Tony Harrison to a 12-round draw. It was his first start with new trainer Roy Jones Jr.
Zambrano, from Mexico City, has been training in San Antonio. Something of a mystery fighter -- this is his U.S. debut – he is the younger brother of Carlos Salgado Zambrano, a former two-time world super featherweight champion.
Costa Mesa, CA
The Hangar, an exposition center and concert hall at the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, will be the site of Top Rank’s offering on ESPN. Top Rank has been here before, most notably on March 23, 2019, when Kubrat Pulev celebrated his TKO of Bogdan Dinu by kissing a female reporter which caused a big snit.
Former U.S. Olympian Mikaela Mayer (16-0, 5 KOs) is the headline attraction. She defends her WBO and IBF world featherweight titles against El Paso veteran Jennifer Han (18-4-1, 1 KO).
San Diego southpaw Giovani Santillan (28-0, 15 KOs) meets Colombia’s Jeovanis Barraza (23-2, 15 KOs) in the co-feature and both Moloney twins will appear in supporting bouts.
The popular Aussies – Jason is a bantamweight and Andrew a super flyweight – sport identical 22-2 records. Jason Moloney opposes Tijuana’s Francisco Pedraza-Portillo (17-10-2, 10 KOs) in a scheduled 10-rounder. His twin brother opposes Modesto, CA journeyman Gilberto Mendoza (19-11-3, 10 KOs) in a bout slated for eight.
U.S. Olympians Duke Ragan and Virginia “Ginny” Fuchs will also be in action. It’s the fifth pro fight for Ragan (4-0, 1 KO), a silver medalist in Tokyo. The 34-year-old Fuchs, an LSU grad with a compelling back story, will be making her pro debut.
San Antonio
The return of undefeated Ryan Garcia who has been out of action for 15 months is the main allurement of the Golden Boy Promotions show at the Alamodome on DAZN. Garcia, a big star on social media with a large female following, opposes Ghana’s Emmanuel Tagoe. (For more on this fight, check out David Avila’s pre-fight report.)
Garcia vs. Tagoe, a 12-rounder, is braced by an exceptionally strong undercard that includes five 10-round fights. In addition to the co-feature, an intriguing super middleweight clash between Gabriel Rosado and Shane Mosley Jr, Brazil’s Patrick Teixeira, a former world super welterweight title-holder, and super bantamweight Azat Hovhannisyan, a former world title challenger, will appear in separate bouts.
Hovhannisyan, from LA by way of Armenia, has won six straight since suffering a loss on points to undefeated Rey Vargas, the reigning WBC world title-holder. He will oppose 15-1 Dagoberto Aguerro from the Dominican Republic.
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The good news is that tomorrow’s lid-lifter will run unopposed. The bad news is that one will have to get up at an ungodly early hour to monitor the developments in Saitama, Japan, where Gennadiy Golovkin meets Ryota Murata in a bout where the stakes are huge.