Zou Shiming to headline HBO fight this Saturday against Jesus Ortega

By Boxing News - 07/24/2013 - Comments

shiming33By Chris Williams: Former two time Olympic Gold Medalist Zou Shiming (1-0) will be headlining Saturday night’s HBO fight card against novice Jesus Ortega (3-1, 2 KO’s) in a scheduled 6 round bout at the Venetian Casino & Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China.

What’s interesting about this is Shiming, a fighter with only 1 fight under his belt, is headlining a fight on HBO, yet Bob Arum of Top Rank is saying that HBO isn’t interested in televising WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux’s fights on their network after his 12 round unanimous decision win over Nonito Donaire last April.

It doesn’t make much sense to me. Rigondeaux is also a two-time former Olympic Gold medalist except that he’s actually a champion, not a prospect like Shiming. If you saw Shiming’s pro debut against 18-year-old Eleazar Valenzuela last April, it’s very difficult to imagine seeing Shiming every capturing a world title.

Shiming’s 32-years-old, he lacks power, he slaps, constantly changes from orthodox to southpaw while fighting, and he’s not great defensively. There’s no comparison at all between Shiming and Rigondeaux. One guy has superb skills, and the other is totally flawed. But what makes me wonder is why Shiming’s fights are fed to the U.S public on HBO, but not Rigondeaux’s? What’s that all about? I just don’t see Shiming as having the talent to win a world title, and I still remember how he controversially won both of his gold medals in the Olympics.

I guess Shiming is going to be a regular on HBO from now, because he’s already being lined up to fight on the undercard of Manny Pacquiao’s fight against Brandon Rios on November 23rd in Macao, China.

I think the undercard fights for this Saturday night are much better than Shiming vs. Ortiz, but even then I still don’t see a whole lot of interest in the U.S with this fight card.

Hardcore fans might sort of like it, but I don’t think they’re in love with the card because pretty much no one is talking about it in the internet forums. That’s a clear sign that the fight is not interesting to U.S hardcore fans when it’s not being talked about in the forums when the fight is only three days away.

Here’s Saturday’s undercard fights on HBO:

Evgeny Gradovich vs. Mauricio Javier Munoz
Juan Francisco Estrada vs. Milan Melindo
Andy Ruiz Jr vs. Joe Hanks



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