By Eric Thomas: According to The Ring’s boxing website, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is trying to arrange a big three-fight card involving WBO light middleweight champion Sergiy Dzinziruk (36-0, 22 KOs) against number #3 ranked WBO challenger James Kirkland (25-0, 22 KOs) for June 27th.
Along with this fight, there’s also talk of this card having WBA featherweight champion Chris John (42-0, 22 KOs) vs. Rocky Juarez (28-4-1, 20 KOs) in a rematch of their controversial 12-round draw on February 28th, and WBA light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-2-1, 13 KOs) against number #4 ranked WBA challenger Victor Ortiz (24-1-1, 19 KOs).
Schaefer is reportedly close to making the deal, which if it takes place would be a huge fight almost guaranteed to please boxing fans.
The Kirkland-Dzinziruk is especially intriguing, matching the high pressure knockout artist against a pure classic boxer with perhaps the best overall boxing skills in the light middleweight division. Kirkland, 24, is coming off a 6th round stoppage over Joel Julio on March 7th in San Jose, California.
Kirkland took the fight to the powerful Julio, backing him up for six rounds and walking through his power shots as if they were nothing. Kirkland continuously smothered Julio, staying on top of him and giving him little room to throw his punches.
Julio, not used to moving, elected to try and move for the entire fight rather than to stand and trade. It didn’t work out well for him using this new style, and he only succeeded in tiring himself out and getting beaten up anyway by Kirkland.
Dzinziruk, 33, also beat Julio, defeating him by an easy 12-round unanimous decision in November 2008. In that fight, Dzinziruk showed off his excellent jab, great movement and the ability to get out of the way of Julio’s tough charges and beating him like a matador.
A fight against Kirkland would be interesting, matching a slugger against a classic boxer. If Kirkland is able to smother Dzinziruk like he has against his other opponents, then it could be an early night for Dzinziruk. However, Dzinziruk is accustomed to fighting on the run and is very hard to pin down.
This could very well be too big of a step up for the crude slugging Kirkland, because he’s never fought anyone close to being as skilled as Dzinziruk and he would be forced into a huge learning curve.
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