Rodriguez-Maderna & Erdei-Grachev in four-fighter 175 lb. tourney on March 30th in Monte Carlo

By Boxing News - 02/01/2013 - Comments

rodriguez432By Allan Fox: Unbeaten super middleweight Edwin Rodriguez (22-0, 15 KO’s) will be facing Argentina’s Ezequiel Osvaldo Maderna (19-0, 13 KO’s) and former two division world champion Zsolt Erdei (33-0, 18 KO’s) will be taking on Dennis Grachev (12-1-1, 8 KO’s) in a four-fighter light heavyweight tournament on March 30th at the Chapiteau de Fontvielle, Monte Carlo.

Both fights are scheduled for 10 rounds, and the two winners of the fights will meet on July 13th with a $1 million purse.

In the co-main event on the card will be unbeaten WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin defending his title in a tune-up bout against Nobuhiro Ishida in a fight that promises to be one-sided from the start to the bitter finish. Ishida has a good chin and he might be able to go the full 12 rounds, but it’s going to be dramatically one-sided because Ishida doesn’t have the power to compete.

38-year-old Erdei will have a tough fight on his hands with the 30-year-old Grachev, who is coming off of two tough fights against Ismayl Sillakh and Lucian Bute in his last two fights. Grachev lost to Bute by a 12 round unanimous decision last November, but he gave him a lot of problems in the entire fight. Before that, Grachev beat Sillakh by an 8th round TKO in April of last year in a huge upset win.

Erdei hasn’t fought in almost two years since beating Byron Mitchell by a 6th round TKO. It’s been closer to four years since Erdei fought a decent opponent when he barely beat Giacobbe Fragomeni by a 12 round majority decision in November of 2009. Erdei was a pretty good fighter in his prime, but he never really beat anyone that you could call a really good fighter in the 175 pound division. Erdei never fought Tavoris Cloud, Bernard Hopkins, Glen Johnson or Chad Dawson.

The idea behind the tournament is a good one but it’s missing the best fighters in the divisin, and that makes it a lot less appealing. If the tourney had Dawson, Jean Pascal, Hopkins, Nathan Cleverly, Beibut Shumenov, Tavoris Cloud, Jurgen Braehmer.



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