Weekend Boxing Predicts 9th/10th June

Image courtesy of DAZN and Golden Boy Promotions

Boxing gives us a busy, if uneven, schedule this weekend, featuring one stacked card by DAZN, one rather weaker card on BT but featuring names worth following, and one wild card from Kazakhstan if you fancy checking out a potential future star. Let’s get to it.

Friday

Gilberto Ramirez vs Sullivan Barrera

Lukasz Fenrych: Ramirez comes into this bout undefeated, getting comfortable at his new weight of 175lbs, and hungry for a world title. At 39 Barrera has probably seen his best days gone, and most recently lost to a foe Zurdo outclassed at a lower division in Jesse Hart, but he’ll always be a tricky opponent and isn’t here to make up the numbers- he’ll want one last run.   
He’s unlikely to get it off the back of this though. Zurdo is a well-rounded smooth boxer with a very nice line in smooth, powerful and varied combinations. If he has a weakness it’s that since his defence isn’t as developed he tends to respond to threats by backing up and can from there be forced into reverse and be hit, but no opponent has really punished him for this yet and while Barrera can be aggressive he’s too open when he does so for Zurdo not to simply get there first and flatten him. I can see the Cuban causing a few problems early on, but ultimately the younger, fresher, bigger Ramirez will win by KO in the middle rounds.

Mateusz Fenrych: Barrera gave Andre S.O.G. Ward a tough(ish) - well, awkward - fight, not all that long ago…

Rigo knows I love me a crafty, ageing Cuban veteran (Erislandy Lara anyone? Anyone?), and Barrera certainly does (did?) know his way around a ring, but I can’t really see how this will go well for him.

As my bro has already pointed out, his loss to Hart, a common opponent and Barrera’s most recent fight, really does not bode well.

At his best, Barrera was probably more fundamentally consistent that Zurdo can be, especially defensively, but that time, let’s face it, seems rather long gone. And even when he was closer to his pomp, such as in his bout with Ward, he had a habit of leaning far out over his front foot while jabbing or throwing straights, with his chin exposed.

The same tendency was visible in his 10-rounder with Hart, and unfortunately and somewhat inevitably, he seemed to slow much quicker than he did in actual 12 round contests.

Zurdo meanwhile, big, strong and with excellent conditioning; he is not the fastest fighter one will ever see but he has solid timing and thudding, accumulative power. He is also comfortable in close exchanges, though his defence is inconsistent and he has a tendency to get touched up, but he is comfortable moving around in close, and it doesn’t seem unfeasible that this ability will come in to play when Barrera leans in for an attack, and Zurdo sees the opportunity to take a tasty angle.

Zurdo, unfortunately for aficionados of old Cubans, is gonna outpace and outmanoeuvre Sullivan, and I don’t think it will take all that long either. TKO 5

Joseph Diaz Jr vs Javier Fortuna

Lukasz: Diaz takes a risk here, stepping up to a new division after failing to make weight for his ultimately drawn 130lbs title defence against Shavkat Rakhimov. Rather than feeling out with a lower-ranked opponent, he’s opted to go straight into a tough fight with Javier Fortuna, in what is officially an ‘interim’ WBC world - but effectively a final eliminator for a shot at Devin Haney’s 135lbs WBC belt.
He could be biting off a bit more than he can chew. ‘JoJo’ is a solid all-round boxer, with a good defence offering both solid head movement and a tight, active guard, and attacks with solid combinations behind a varied, well-built-on jab, but his weakness is his footwork, which isn’t very fast. Fortuna can get sloppy and is likely to get drawn into exchanges he doesn’t really need to be in, but ultimately I can see him being too mobile, too physically strong, and sharp enough with his own accuracy to ultimately leave Diaz a little short. Fortuna by decision  

Mateusz: This certainly does seem like a risk, but it should make for a fun gamble. Diaz Jr is a tidy boxer, neat and precise in his movements, and with decent speed. He doesn’t seem to possess one-hit power, but he hits tidy combinations and doesn’t seem to lose form easily.

Problem is, while Fortuna is sort of the opposite - he seems to major on looping hooks that keep his feet rooted even as he falls out of position sometimes - he possesses the sort of bang-bang that occasionally sees him collapse opponents into their own foundations. I can see him really being able to physically impose himself on Diaz Jr, although I have to admit being compelled by what Diaz’s straight-hitting can inflict while Fortuna leaves his centre-line open.

That said, Fortuna is accurate enough at range to be able to crack Diaz without needing to get close and start hooking, so it remains to be seen whether Diaz can goad him into disadvantageous positions.

My money is on yes, but not enough for the victory; Fortuna by decision

Saturday

Lyndon Arthur vs Davide Faraci

Lukasz: This was meant to be a tune-up double header with both Arthur and Anthony Yarde fighting picked opponents ahead of what would presumably have been the announcement of a rematch. Yarde’s opponent pulled out and no replacement was found, so now we’ve got a bit of a pointless card with Arthur against an unbeaten but completely untested Davide Faraci. Tape of him suggests him to be slow and quite stiff, to boot. Arthur can be a cautious man, but he should have enough class to force a stoppage, maybe around Round 4.

(worth noting: this card also features the return of Archie Sharp, a not-powerful, sometimes-frustrating but slick and fun British prospect. I don’t know enough about his opponent, Diego Andrade Chavez, to make a predict- it looks like a gimme picked for Sharp to look good but the curse of the unknown Mexican has been striking British fighters hard the last couple of years so if you’re planning to watch this card, keep an eye out for this one)

MF: Something tells me this won’t be a KO win, for whoever does prevail. Neither fighter has an amazing KO rate and Arthur especially has retreated behind a streak of 12 round decisions for his last three fights.

That, at least, suggests he has the stamina and experience that Faraci, who has never seen a 9th round, to ride out a decision win.

There will be a lot of fast, whipping jabs though. Except, as Arthur showed in his very, very narrow victory over Anthony Yarde, he can keep his up for the duration of a fight (almost to the point of neglecting to throw his rear hand at all), while Faraci seems to get a bit impatient and wild after a while.

Neither man’s competition thus far (Yarde for Arthur aside, possibly) really indicates what sort of level each relative to his opponent in this fight, but what Arthur showed against Yarde was he is very capable of staying patient, calm and collected, even under pressure from an increasingly urgent Yarde, until the very end of the fight.

I’m hedging hard with an Arthur UD.

Tursynbay Kulakhmet vs Aleksei Evchenko

Lukasz: Kulakhmet is an exciting rising (not that young, at 27, but not in a complete hurry yet like some amateurs-turned-pro either) Kazakh super-welterweight, most notable for some shiny, flashy footwork in the Lomachenko style. His original opponent, Stanyslav Skorokhod, would have been a decent step up in his fledgling career, testing Kulakhment’s tendency to rely solely on that movement for defence. Unfortunately he appears to have pulled out and been replaced with a 19-15-2 Russian, so this is most likely to be one to look out for to see the Kazakh style a bit if you haven’t before. He isn’t a great knockout artist, and only one of his opponent’s losses has been by knockout, but there’s gonna be a substantial levels distance here, so I’ll hazard a guess at a dominant performance resulting in a mid-rounds Kulakhmet KO.