Spence-Barrera & Charlo-Campfort this Saturday on PBC

By Boxing News - 11/24/2015 - Comments

spenceBy Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten #10 WBA, #10 WBC, #13 WBO welterweight contender Errol Spence Jr. (18-0, 15 KOs) will be fighting this Saturday night against Alejandro Barrera (26-2, 17 KOs) on Premier Boxing Champions on NBC from The Bomb Factory, in Dallas, Texas.

It’s a fight that isn’t a great match-up for the 25-year-old Spence, but at least it’s a fight that will keep him busy and marching forward with his pro career. Spence wants the bigger fights, but right now he doesn’t have the ranking and the popularity to force those important fights.

Spence recently beat Chris Van Heerden, Phil Lo Greco and Samuel Vargas by knockouts. Those are decent level opposition, but not the kind of opponents that will get Spence the bigger fights that he wants. The truth is that Spence is probably going to need to wait until he’s ranked #1 by the WBA or WBC before he eventually gets a big fight, and that will be a world title fight. But it’s unknown how long it’s going to take before one of the sanctioning bodies ranks him high enough before he gets a crack at one of the titles.

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With Spence’s punching power and superb amateur pedigree, he’s probably not going to be given a title shot on a silver platter by the likes of IBF champion Kell Brook, WBA champ Keith Thurman or WBO champion Tim Bradley. Thurman has already made it clear that he doesn’t see Spence as a big enough name for him to bother fighting. You can imagine that the other champions will feel the same. Spence could eventually go after Floyd Mayweather Jr’s WBA and WBC 147lb titles once he’s officially stripped of them, but it’s still going to take a while before Spence gets ranked high enough to fight for those titles. Getting the top fighters to agree to fight Spence may prove to be impossible until he holds a major title.

One area where Spence needs work is with his self-promotional ability. He needs a good person to help shape his career outside of the ring by helping him become more flashy like Mayweather and Adrien Broner. The fighters that do a lot of talking tend to get a lot of attention in boxing. Spence doesn’t talk nearly enough to get the kind of attention that he deserves.

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IBF junior middleweight champion Jermall Charlo (22-0, 17 KOs) will be headlining the PBC card in defending his IBF 154lb title against little known #14 IBF fringe contender Silky” Wilky Campfort (21-1, 12 KOs). It’s the 25-year-old Charlo’s first defense of his IBF title after having won the belt with a 3rd round knockout over champion Cornelius Bundrage last September. Charlo knocked Bundrage down four times in the fight with huge shots before the fight was eventually halted.

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Also on the Charlo-Campfort card is unbeaten junior middleweight knockout artist Erickson Lubin (12-0, 9 KOs) facing Alexis Camacho (21-5, 19 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round bout. The 20-year-old Lubin has huge punching power and excellent boxing skills. What Lubin lacks is hand speed and huge size for the 154lb division.

Lubin might be better off losing weight and fighting at welterweight, because he doesn’t rehydrate to huge levels like we see from fighters like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. It might be better for Lubin to lose water weight to fight guys more his own size at welterweight than to be fighting at junior middleweight against fighters that would potentially outweigh him by 20 pounds like Canelo or the Charlo brothers.



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