Hearn makes predictions on Joshua-Leo, Quigg-Salinas & Selby-Walsh

By Boxing News - 10/04/2013 - Comments

hearn44By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn is predicting stoppage victories for 3 of his top fighters in action this Saturday night at the O2 Arena in London, UK. Most of the predictions are pretty obvious given the competition that his fighters have.

First off, Hearn is predicting a KO win for heavyweight Anthony Joshua over Emanuele Leo (8-0, 3 KO’s) in their scheduled 6 round fight.

Hearn told I Film London “Anthony Joshua by knockout. I’m picking Joshua by 2nd or 3rd round knockout.”

This is a pretty easy fight to predict, but it’s interesting that Hearn has been spending so much time building up Leo to be someone that has a chance in this fight. He doesn’t. It’s a mismatch straight up. Leo isn’t in the class of Joshua, and you can expect a quick knockout.

Hearn is hoping that Joshua will knock him out in spectacular fashion, and he may very well do that because the levels between them are pretty huge. I just hope that Hearn doesn’t get things twisted after this fight and start to get illusions that Joshua is a knockout puncher, because he’s not a puncher. He’s an arm puncher and he doesn’t have the power to blast through the good opponents.

We saw in the Olympics and in Joshua’s previous amateur fights that he’s more of a boxer than a puncher. Hearn will eventually find that out when he eventually starts putting Joshua in with live bodies instead of easy opponents.

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In the Lee Selby (16-1, 6 KO’s) vs. Ryan Walsh (16-0-1, 8 KO’s) bout, Hearn is going with Selby to win by knockout. Hearn said “I’m going to go for Selby stoppage 8 to 11.”

This is another mismatch. Selby will be defending his British and Commonwealth titles against an over-matched Walsh.

Both guys sport similar to records, but Selby has fought the better competition and he’s the much bigger fighter. Walsh was held to a 10 round draw last November against Ronnie Clark and that kind of tells you all you need to know about Walsh.

I’m kind of surprised that Hearn is still matching Selby against domestic level competition because I thought he was going to start matching him up against world class competition, but it looks like Hearn is keeping Selby on his training wheels.

In the Scott Quigg (26-0-1, 19 KO’s) vs. Yoandris Salinas (20-0-1, 13 KO’s) fight, Hearn is picking Quigg to win by knockout. Quigg will be defending his WBA World super bantamweight title for the first time after having been given the title outside of the ring by the World Boxing Association.

The former champion Guillermo Rigondeaux has been moved up to WBA Super World super bantamweight champion. It’s pretty sad how the WBA creates 2 champions for every division instead of just one. I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually see 3 or 4 champions for the WBA for each division with separate A-D classifications.

Hearn said this about the Quigg-Salinas fight “Scott Quigg, it’s a real 50-50 fight. It’ll be Scott Quigg by knockout 9th round to 11th round.”

I agree with Quigg winning by stoppage, because I’m not impressed at all with what I’ve seen from Salinas. He’s pretty basic and I don’t know why the WBA has him ranked #2.

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Lightweight Kevin Mitchell (34-2, 24 KO’s) will be fighting Marco Lopez (23-2, 14 KO’s) for the vacant IBF Inter-Continental lightweight title.

Mitchell was stopped by WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns in the 4th round last year in September, and he can’t afford to lose another bout if he wants to get another title shot in the near future. I mean, I don’t see Mitchell as having the talent to win a world title even if he were to get a shot at a strap, but I’m sure he’s interested in getting the chance none the less.

Mitchell won his last fight against little known Sebastien Benito last July by an 8 round points decision.

Mitchell’s opponent Lopez was stopped in the 5th round earlier this year by Juan Antonio Rodriguez in March. Lopez bounced back from that loss to defeat journeyman Juan Carlos Pacheco by a 2nd round TKO last August.

It looks like Hearn has matched Mitchell with a soft job in this fight. I can’t say I blame him. Mitchell needs to be guided really carefully if they want to keep him from getting beaten again before he gets another title shot.



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