6th/7th August Boxing Preview
(Photo by Leigh Dawney/Getty Images)
A busy summer of boxing continues. While a bit more uneven than last week’s card, Saturday’s visit to Eddie Hearn’s garden for Fight Camp Week 2 has a good headliner and some fun names down the card. We’ll also see an MTK card on Friday in Belfast, featuring Michael Conlan. Let’s take a look.
Friday, August 6th
Michael Conlan vs. TJ Doheny
Conlan has had a strange old career so far. After turning pro in a cloud of publicity following THAT photo of his… dissatisfaction with the judging at the 2016 Olympics, he’s sort of bumbled along, building a decent following but little actual career momentum. Five years into his career and at 29 years old, he’s still being brought along like a prospect.
That, truth be told, is probably because he isn’t all that good — not ‘win a world title’ good anyway. He gets a job done, but often not excitingly, picking and poking at opponents you’d hope he can overrun, and has an odd line in extremely wide looped shots when he goes on to the attack. No one he’s fought has truly been able to take advantage of that yet, but he hasn’t shoved his way into title contention either. He made a jump up in weight to super-bantam against Ionut Baluta in April, and is continuing that here, against a former opponent of Baluta’s, TJ Doheny.
Doheny is a former holder of the IBF belt at the weight, and lost that in a unification bout with Danny Roman in 2019. His planned route back from that loss was unexpectedly thrown off the rails when he faced Baluta in 2020 in an 8 round supposed tune-up and lost, but in truth, not a lot should be read in to the fact that Conlan owns a win where Doheny took a loss. It’s not a good look on him, but it would be fair to say he may have overlooked the Romanian in a way he won’t here, and more to the point, Doheny’s brand of tight, competent pocket boxing could cause trouble for Conlan’s wild swinging in close if he can consistently close the distance. That’s not a guarantee by any means — he’s not fast, and though an okay mover he has a bad habit of not making sure his opponent is fully trapped in the corner before setting his feet and swinging, leaving avenues for escape that didn’t need to be there. Conlan will be happy to try to take advantage of that to poke and evade, but it could be a tougher fight than Conlan’s handlers are hoping for.
Lee McGregor vs. Vincent Legrand
McGregor here takes his new, more aggressive style out for a second spin after rolling over Karim Guerfi with it in March. This one’s worth looking out for because while very impressive it’s possible that some of McGregor’s success in that fight came from Guerfi simply not expecting such a rapid turnaround in gameplan from a fighter who’d previously been more comfortable on the back foot, laying back to lure opponents in with counters. Legrand will presumably be more prepared for it, and though in reality this is a bit of a cherry pick, drawing a fighter who’s only previous experience at this level is when he held the EBU title himself two divisions lighter at flyweight, how McGregor works his clinch and pocket aggression against an opponent who knows it’s coming will be worth paying attention to. It’s also worth noting that although he held the belt at flyweight, Legrand has fought as high as 122lbs and isn’t by any means going to be outsized by McGregor. He should win fairly comfortably though- Legrand has spent the three years since his flyweight EBU defence fighting six rounders against men with losing records, and that isn’t likely to be good enough prep to handle McGregor.
Saturday, August 7th
Kid Galahad vs. Jazza Dickens
These two have got previous, having fought in 2013 for the British super-bantamweight title. Galahad won that one, a terrific little fight in which Galahad ultimately showed a skill advantage in the pocket to pull away and force a TKO in the 10th round. They’ve both been on long journeys since: Galahad spent two years sitting out on a drug suspension in a wild story allegedly involving a jealous brother and a spiked drink, then after being the awkward, tough-to-beat ‘who needs him’ guy for a couple of years worked his way into a title shot against Josh Warrington which he lost in a very close, in some eyes controversial, decision.
Dickens meanwhile meandered about for a couple of years then gained some marketing traction for stepping up to fight the great Guillermo Rigondeaux. Although he lost both that and the next fight against Thomas Patrick Ward, he seemed to parlay that into the drive he needed to get himself back to the top of the British game. His recent run includes a very good recent win against last week’s upset victor, Leigh Wood.
Stylistically, things won’t have changed too much from last time, but the work should be higher-level from both- but it’s worth noting that Galahad has embraced the grimier side of the game a bit more than he had, I think, so if he feels the need to rough things up and drop the tempo to get Dickens out of his stride, he probably will.
Dickens in his turn has tightened up his wild swinging a bit and, most importantly, become far more defensively responsible as he approaches, disguising his moves behind feints and jabs. Galahad will have a tougher time landing on him as he closes range, but what remains to be seen a bit is how well he can deal with Galahad once in the pocket, since he simultaneously needs to get there but probably can’t deal with Galahad’s speed and skill advantages for extended exchanges. If he can land a shot or two and get out, he’s got a good shout, if he gets dragged into longer exchanges or clinch wars, he’ll be on the losing side in more of them. An intriguing one.
Fabio Wardley vs. Nick Webb
Fabio Wardley’s is an unlikely story. The former white-collar boxing latecomer, who since turning pro has made some unexpected moves up the British heavyweight scene, currently holds the English heavyweight title and will be looking to cement his place in the standings against Nick Webb, who’s got losses to Dave Allen and Kamil Sokolowski on his record but has had a little run recently of busting prospects. Webb on paper looks like a step down from Wardley’s last opponent, former world title challenger Eric Molina, but he’s no walkover and will be looking to upset the applecart on Wardley’s run towards a British title challenge.
Style-wise, Wardley is as you might expect from a late starter a little ragged technically, but he is very fast and has good fighting instincts — in that when he does get off balance or in a little tough spot, he doesn’t freeze but looks to secure space by punching if needed and then get out of there. He tends to have ideas better than his execution — he’ll feint, look to work up and down, work off-rhythm, do all the things you need to do to create openings from the outside, but it’s a toss-up whether his feet are right to execute it as well as he wants. Since he is still improving, this may well be better on Saturday than in previous fights.
Webb is probably the more fundamentally sound boxer of the two, liking to push opponents back with a busy jab that he does chain attacks off pretty well, but he isn’t very fast and can get defensively lazy, the combination of which has got him in trouble before (see his fight against Allen) and is most likely to be the difference here, given Wardley’s speed. If that jab of his can disrupt Wardley’s fledgling rhythm-games, though, we could see an upset — and look out for the possibility of Wardley rocking himself off balance to avoid it and stepping into the follow-up shot. This could be the closest fight of the night, though it’s still a little hard to tell how good Wardley is really.
The Rest
The other notable name on the card is Alen Babic. He’s made a name for himself during the Covid era by just turning up to joyfully punch his opponents often and hard, and we’ll be hoping for more of that here. Quite whether he has any real future rising to the top of the division is uncertain, but he’s in tearups, he’s fun, he’s got himself a little following and he’ll ride it as long as it lasts. Good for him.
Other than that, we’ve got Ebanie Bridges returning after her loss to Shannon Courtenay, but she’s fighting a Bec Connoly who’s 3-9, never beaten anyone with a winning record, and fighting well under her usual weight, so it’s a tune-up really. We’ll also see the slick Aliq Fiaz, a classy counter-punching super-featherweight well worth keeping an eye on as he seeks to rise in the British scene.