By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg (28-0-2, 21 KOs) weighed in successfully on Friday for his fight on Saturday night against #12 Stephane Jamoye (26-5, 16 KOs) at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
Jamoye is a replacement opponent for another fringe contender Quigg was going to face in #15 IBF Paulus Ambunda. Quigg’s promoter Eddie Hearn basically exchanged one fringe contender for another one when he made the Quigg-Jamoye fight.
Quigg weighed in at 121.4 pounds. For his part, Jamoye weighed in at 121.8 pounds.
This is not a great fight by any means unless you like mismatches between champions and fringe contenders. If that’s your interest this is going to be quite pleasing. Jamoye is a 12-1 underdog in the fight, but after watching some of his fights, I’m surprised the odds are not even worse than this.
Quigg needs to get this win so that he can possibly look to put together a unification match against IBF champion Carl Frampton. It wouldn’t necessarily be a fight between the two best guys in the division, because many boxing fans see WBC champion Leo Santa Cruz and WBA/WBO champ Guillermo Rigondeaux as being the top fighters in the 122 pound division. But a Santa Cruz vs. Frampton fight would be a big deal for the UK.
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The undercard has two fights that somewhat interest to me in heavyweight Anthony Joshua vs. Konstantin Airich and lightweight Anthony Crolla (28-4-1, 11 KOs) vs. Garmalliel Diaz (38-11-2, 17 KOs).
The Joshua-Airich fight is a mismatch, but it’ll be interesting to see if Joshua has improved his speed and his mobility. He’s looked really slow on his feet and flat-footed since he turned pro. He needs to take off some weight because he seems to be over muscled like a body builder rather than a fighter. I can’t picture Joshua ever developing into a fighter that can go more than 6 rounds without gassing out unless he takes off some of the useless muscle on his upper body.
The Crolla-Diaz fight is a mismatch as well. Diaz, 33, is a journeyman and obviously he’s being brought in to make Crolla look good first of all, and to make sure he keeps winning so that he can get a title shot against the WBO lightweight champion. With the current WBO champion Terence Crawford likely to be vacating his title in the near future, Crolla will have a chance to fight someone like Raymundo Beltran or if he’s really, really lucky someone like Paulus Moses for the vacant WBO lightweight title.
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