Kevin Mitchell vs. Ghislain Maduma in IBF 135lb eliminator on 5/31, winner faces Miguel Vazquez

By Boxing News - 04/29/2014 - Comments

mitchell4554By Scott Gilfoid: #5 IBF Kevin Mitchell (37-2, 27 KO’s) will be trying to set himself up for another world title shot when he faces unbeaten #4 IBF Ghislain Maduma (16-0, 10 KO’s) next month in an IBF lightweight eliminator bout on May 31st at the Wembley Stadium in London, UK. The winner of the Mitchell-Maduma fight will be the mandatory for IBF lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez, and will find themselves in a very, very tough fight.

Mitchell, 29, already had a shot at a world title two years ago when he challenged former WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns for his WBO strap, but Mitchell was blown out quickly in four one-sided rounds in what you can basically call a massacre. Previous to that, Mitchell tried to step it up against WBO interim lightweight champion Michael Katsidis in May of 2010, but unfortunately Mitchell was destroyed in that fight too in losing a 3rd round TKO.

Now Mitchell is trying to get himself another crack at a title, and it seems that he’s had very good luck in terms of his promoters being able to get important fights for him. The problem is Mitchell keeps failing each time he’s put into a big fight, and you have to wonder how many more chances he’s going to get before his promoters decide to give up on him and move in another direction.

Mitchell’s chances of beating Maduma are 50-50, because Maduma doesn’t have much experience and it’s possible that Mitchell might be able to get a decision win somehow. But as far as Mitchell beating Miguel Vazquez, that’s going to be a very difficult task, because even Burns would likely be way out of his class if matched against a talented fighter like Vazquez. As such, we’re almost talking about the Mitchell-Maduma fight being one in which we’re looking at the next victim for Vazquez rather than someone with a good chance of beating him.

Mitchell has done a good job of turning his career around since his loss to Burns. Indeed, Mitchell has won his last four fights since his embarrassing loss to Burns. The problem is the guys that Mitchell has beaten – Sebastien Benito, Marco Lopez, Karim El Ouazghari and Mikheil Avakyan – aren’t what I would call quality. We’re talking 3rd tier quality opposition, aren’t we? Mitchell has done his job in beating these guys, but he’s also burned up a year and a half of his career in taking these fights. Those guys weren’t really good enough to say us anything at all about Mitchell, so he’s kind of going into his fight against Maduma as still the same fighter that Burns blew out in 4 rounds. That means that his fight with Maduma is really going to be a toss up, because there’s no way of knowing how Mitchell will do once put in with a quality fighter again.

The past tells us that Mitchell fails miserably when he’s stepped up a level. Will that happen this time? I guess it depends on what Maduma has. In watching some of Maduma’s fights, I noticed he’s a lot faster than Mitchell with better power and better foot speed. I rate Maduma as a far better puncher than the light-hitting Burns. If Maduma takes the fight to Mitchell as Burns and Katsidis did, we could see Mitchell destroyed awfully quick on May 31st. If Mitchell has improved since those defeats, he’ll stand a better chance of winning, but he’ll still need to fight a better game than he’s done in the past when facing quality opposition.



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