By Scott Gilfoid: Former middleweight contender Darren Barker (23-1, 14 KO’s) will be facing the recently knocked out light hitting middleweight contender Kerry Hope (17-4, 1 KO’s) on December 8th on the undercard of the Carson Jones vs. Lee Purdy fight at the Olympia, Kensington, London, United Kingdom. The 30-year-old Barker hasn’t fought since last November in being stopped in the 11th round by Sergio Martinez last year in November and Barker now has completely slipped from the world rankings due to the time away from the ring. Barker fought passively in the Martinez fight and put in a text example of how not to fight when you’re challenging the world’s best middleweight. Barker was in survival mode the entire fight, and wasted his time by taking the fight.

Hope, 31, is coming off of an 8th round TKO loss to Grzegorz Proksa last July in a fight where Hope was little more than a weak hitting punching bag for eight rounds for Proksa. However, Hope is still ranked #7 IBF in the middleweight division for some reason despite the loss, but that’ll probably change after December 8th if Barker isn’t too rusty to fight.

It’s a decent tune-up fight for Barker. Hope isn’t much of a threat due to his lack of power, and the only thing that Barker has to worry about is making sure he can throw enough punches to win the fight. Hope is a high punch volume fighter, so Barker is going to have to avoid standing in front of him for the full 12 rounds unless he feels like he can take this guy out. Barker isn’t a big puncher like Proksa, and it might be a mistake if he tries to slug this guy out.

A fight between lightweight Gavin Rees and John Murray is being talked about for this card as well. It’s still not a done deal, however. I’m not all that excited about this fight, because Murray has already been exposed by Kevin Mitchell and Brandon Rios. And Rees just isn’t fighting any real quality guys since he was soundly beaten by Andriy Kotelnik four years ago. It’s as if that defeat was the end of Rees fighting world class opposition but it’s pretty much nothing but domestic level opposition since then.

It’s pretty disappointing when you think about it. Rees loses his WBA light welterweight strap in a loss to Kotelnik and instead of continuing to fight world class opposition, Rees reverts to an earlier stage in his development by fighting nothing but domestic level opposition. I could understand Rees doing this for one fight, but for four years? What a waste. Now Rees is 32 and he’s STILL looking to fight domestic level with the Murray fight. Why bother?

Here is what the card has more or less in terms of the fights that boxing fans will care about:

Erick Ochieng vs.TBA
Danny Connor vs.Chris Evangelou
Kreshnik Qato vs. John Ryder
Gavin Rees vs. TBA