Flores 200.8, Shumenov 199.4 – Weights

By Boxing News - 07/24/2015 - Comments

shumenov5By Dan Ambrose: 36-year-old BJ Flores (31-1-1, 20 KOs) came in over the cruiserweight limit at 200.8lbs during today’s weigh-in for his fight on Saturday night against former WBA light heavyweight champion Beibut Shumenov (15-2, 10 KOs) at the Palms Casino and Resort, Pearl Theater, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Shumenov vs. Flores fight will be televised on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC Sports.

Shumenov weighed in at 199.4lbs. The interim WBA World cruiserweight title will be on the line for the fight. The winner of Saturday’s Shumenov-Flores fight could put themselves in position to fight for a title against WBA cruiserweight champion Denis Lebedev.

It’s not surprising that Flores came in over the limit. He hasn’t fought since last October. Being out of the ring for as long as he’s been, it had to have been hard for him to lose weight to get down to the 200lb limit.

Flores hasn’t taken on a tough opponent for ages. His last fight against a real quality opponent was give years ago in 2010 when he lost to Danny Green. Since then, Flores has faced largely weak opposition. You can make an argument that Green is really the only quality name on Flores’ resume.

Flores has been around for ages, but for some reason he’s just not taken on the good fighters in the division. For someone who has been around as long as Flores, he should have already fought the likes of Denis Lebedev, Marco Huck, Yoan Pablo Hernandez, Victor Ramirez, and Grigory Drozd ages ago. Flores has seen younger fighters pass him by because he’s not stepped up his level of opposition. He’s had a failure to launch in a major way, which is why he’s 36 and still not having won a championship.

Shumenov moved up to the cruiserweight division recently after losing his title a year ago to Bernard Hopkins. While Shumenov does look a little bit better at cruiserweight, he doesn’t look good enough to beat the top names in the division. Shumenov has a No.1 ranking with the World Boxing Association right now, but he doesn’t look like he rates that high ranking.

You can make an argument that a number of contenders in the WBA’s top 15 are better fighters than Shumenov. Fortunately for Shumenov, he probably won’t have to face any of them before getting a title shot against Lebedev, because the WBA has given Shumenov a very generous ranking after he moved up in weight and beat someone named Bobby Thomas Jr. in his last fight last December.

Other weights on the card

Jordan Shimmell 198.8 vs. Isiah Thomas 198.4
Rico Ramos 126.2 vs. Claudio Marrero 127.8
Andrew Tabiti 196.4 vs. Roberto Santos 204.4



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