Rios-Chaves, Vargas-Novikov & Kovalev-Caparello on August 2nd on HBO triple-header

By Boxing News - 06/12/2014 - Comments

rios1By Dan Ambrose: HBO will be televising a triple-header on August 2nd with former WBA lightweight champion Brandon Rios (31-2-1, 23 KO’s) in a must win fight against Diego Chaves (23-1, 19 KO’s) in a fight at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. Also on the card is WBA light welterweight champion Jessie Vargas (24-0, 9 KO’s) making his first defense of his title against #13 WBC, #15 IBF fringe contender Anton Novikov (29-0, 10 KO’s).

WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (24-0-1, 22 KO’s) will be fighting in a separate venue likely against Australian Blake Caparello (19-0-1, 6 KO’s) at the Revel Resort, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA.

The Rios-Chaves fight is a slightly interesting fight because it matches two guys who the same type of fighters and badly in need of wins. Rios has lost his last 2 fights to Mike Alvarado and Manny Pacquiao, and his career looks to be sinking into the mire. And Chaves was stopped by Keith Thurman last year in July in the one fight during his career where he fought a good opponent.

Seeing Chaves getting beaten so easily by Thurman was disappointing because Chaves’ unbeaten record made him look better than he actually was. Against Thurman, Chaves fought identical to the Carlos Molina that Adrien Broner recently beat. He looked really poor, and nothing like a fighter with a 23-0 record at the time.

The Kovalev-Caparello fight is a mismatch, because Caparello has little punching power and he’s faced anyone that you can call a good fighter. He’s basically going to be stepping into the ring against a guy that will likely annihilate him in the 1st round unless he’s got a great chin. Kovalev had an easy fight in his last fight in beating Cedric Agnew by a 7th round knockout last March in a fight where Agnew looked like a punching bag for 6 rounds until getting stopped in the 7th. Agnew came into the fight with an unbeaten resume filled with weak opposition.

Vargas, 25, recently defeated WBA 140-pound champion Khabib Allakhverdiev by a 12 round unanimous decision on the Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley card last April. The fight Vargas- Allakhverdiev was an incredibly boring fight from start to finish and it was painful to watch due both of them having little power and just fighting defensively.

Anton Novikov, 26, has little power to speak of, and not much in the way of a resume. His best wins have come against Robert Frankel, Javier Castro and Manuel Perez. This is basically C level opposition, and yet he’s been picked out to fight Vargas for a world title.

This card has decent fighters, but the fights themselves are pretty much mismatches. Instead of having Vargas fight Novikov should have matched Vargas against Rios. Chaves and Novikov should have been matched up against each other in an off television fight. And Kovalev should be facing someone like Lucian Bute, Andrzej Fonfara or Eleider Alvarez. At least with Kovalev facing one of those guys, boxing fans would be interested in seeing the fight because these guys are known by some casual boxing fans.



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