Korobov pulls out of Crawford-Jean card

By Boxing News - 10/10/2015 - Comments

korobov5By Dan Ambrose: #12 WBO middleweight contender Matt Korobov (24-1, 14 KOs) has pulled out of his October 24th fight against journeyman Josue Obando (13-7-1, 10 KOs) for unknown reasons. Korobov was scheduled to fight on Obando on the undercard of the Terence Crawford vs. Dierry Jean fight at the CenturyLink Center, in Omaha, Nebraska.

Korobov, 32, hasn’t fought since losing to Andy Lee by a 6th round knockout last December. Korobov was well ahead of Lee at the time of the stoppage. Korobov’s promoters at Top Rank aren’t giving a reason as of yet why Korobov pulled out of the Obando fight.

You can speculate that perhaps he suffered an injury during training camp and didn’t want to fight injured, even though he’d likely would have been able to beat Obando even with one hand.

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Korobov still has the talent to be a world champion. He just needs to get in position for a title shot, because he’s clearly too good for him to be given a shot at one of the middleweight champions with them making a voluntary defense. None of champions are going to go out of their way to take on a top challenger like Korobov when they’re making simple voluntary defenses.

Korobov looked great last year in beating Jose Uzcategui by an easy 10 round unanimous decision in June 2014. Korobov put Uzcategui down twice in the 7th round of that contest.

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Jorge Linares defends WBC title against Ivan Cano on Saturday, October 10th

WBC lightweight champion Jorge Linares (39-3, 26 KOs) will be defending his WBC title this Saturday on October 10th in a voluntary defense against #10 WBC Ivan Cano (23-6-2, 15 KOs) at the El Poliedro, in Caracas, Venezuela. Linares, 30, is coming off of a tough 10th round knockout win over Kevin Mitchell last May in London, England.

Linares went to England to defend his title against Mitchell even though he was the champion and Mitchell just the challenger. Linares ignored the cheering crowd and dominated Mitchell in giving him a methodical beating until finally the fight was halted in the 10th.

Linares could have fought Mitchell again in a rematch, but it would have meant traveling to England again to fight him. Mitchell reportedly wasn’t interested in fighting Linares in Venezuela.

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Cano hasn’t been fighting at a high level lately, as he fought to a draw twice against Javier Prieto in 2014, and he was beaten by Daniel Ruiz in 2013 by an 8th round disqualification and stopped in the 11th round by Dierry Jean in 2012.

You can’t fault Linares for fighting a guy like Cano because this is a voluntary defense and not one of his mandatory defenses. You can’t expect the champions to fight tough guys all the time.

“I am ready to continue dominating the lightweight division and ready to bring a big night of boxing to Venezuela on October 10,” Linares said. “This is a great homecoming for me. After traveling for most of my career, I am proud to bring the title to Venezuela and be able to defend it at home. On October 10, I will continue to show why I am a champion at 135 pounds.”

Linares was born and raised in Venezuela, but he lives in Tokyo, Japan. He can’t really call Venezuela his home anymore because he’s been living in Japan for a while now.



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