By Sean McDaniel: World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (25-1, 16 KO’s) has reportedly had shoulder surgery earlier today to repair his right shoulder, which came out of the socket in his recent fight with Adrian Diaconu in their fight on December 11th. The problem first occurred early on in the fight, causing Pascal to have to fight the remainder of the bout using mainly his left hand to do most of the damage.

Pascal was able to do enough to win a 12 round unanimous decision over Diaconu, but the lopsided scores seemed way out of touch with the actual fight that took place at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Canada. Pascal, 27, appeared to just barely win the fight over Diaconu. However, the judges scored it 117-111, 117-111 and 118-110. Diaconu landed the harder shots and was the constant aggressor in the 2nd half of the fight after Pascal had injured his shoulder.

The injury should keep Pascal out of action until mid 2010.

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Duddy could face Sinclair

Middleweight contender John Duddy (27-1, 17 KO’s) could be facing Neil Sinclair (33-7, 26 KO’s). It’s a fight that may not mean much to some boxing fans, but for Irish fans who are familiar with Sinclair, this is a big deal. Sinclair, 35, holds the Irish light middleweight title and is an exciting fighter. Although Sinclair does have a weakness for getting knocked out from time to time, having been stopped three times in the past four years, but he has the talent and the power to give Duddy trouble if he chooses to mix it up with him.

Duddy, 30, has a bout coming up on January 23rd against Juan Astorga (14-3-1, 9 KO’s) at Madison Square Garden, in New York. This would be another good fight for the 30-year-old Duddy to get his boxing career back in order after suffering a narrow 10 round split decision defeat against Billy Lyell earlier this year in April. Duddy was outworked in that fight and seemed out of his element with the high punch output from Lyell. The loss pushed Duddy down in the middleweight rankings and likely cost him a title shot against Kelly Pavlik as well.

However, Duddy, despite the loss, remains ranked at number #9 in the World Boxing Organization, and only has to continue to win for the next or so and he’ll quickly get back up there in the rankings. There was talk of Duddy facing Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., but nothing has come of that yet because Chavez failed a recent drug test. However, that would still be a great fight for Duddy as well.

Duddy looked okay at times in his last fight against Michi Munoz in October. Duddy controlled most of the fight, but was caught by big shots from Munoz in every round and in some ways, the fight looked a little similar to Duddy’s bout against Walid Smichet in February 2008. Duddy needs to learn to protect himself more in his fights, because Munoz found it easy to land his big shots against Duddy, especially in the later rounds of the fight. This is the same problem that Duddy had in his win over Matt Vanda earlier this year.