Errol Spence vs. Chris Van Heerden next Friday, September 11th

By Boxing News - 09/04/2015 - Comments

spenceBy Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten #8 WBA welterweight contender Errol Spence Jr. (17-0, 14 KOs) will be facing #7 IBF Chris Van Heerden (23-1-1, 12 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round fight next Friday on September 11th on Premier Boxing Champions on Spike TV on undercard of the Adonis Stevenson vs. Tommy Karpency fight card from the Ricoh Coliseum, Toronto, Canada.

This is a fight where the 25-year-old Spence needs an impressive victory so that he get moved up higher in the WBA’s rankings. Spence wants a shot at WBA “regular” welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman, but without a high enough ranking to force a fight against him, it enables Thurman to keep fighting soft touches like Luis Collazo, Leonard Bundu and Robert Guerrero rather than a dangerous guy like Spence.

For Spence to get a fight against Thurman, it’s pretty much obvious that he’s going to need to become his mandatory challenger, because Thurman and his adviser Al Haymon would likely never take a fight against a big puncher like Spence without him being the mandatory challenger and without the voluntary defenses all being used up to where there’s no way of avoiding the fight.

Van Heerden is a good fighter. He has wins over Matthew Hatton, Ray Narh, Ramon Ayala, Cosme Rivera, Sebastian Andres Lujan and Kaizer Mabuza. The 28-year-old Van Heerden’s problem is he’s spent too much of his career fighting C level opposition, and he’s starting to get up there in age now. He needs to be fighting for a world title now instead of fighting guys like Narh, Ayala and Rivera.

Fighting those guys is okay earlier in a fighter’s career, but when you’re still fighting them as you’re nearing 30, it’s not a good thing. Van Heerden needs a win over Spence, and then he needs to beat another contender or two so that he can get a world title shot. Van Heerden’s only defeat of his career was five years ago to Nikola Stevanovic in losing a 12 round split decision.

Also on the Spence vs. Van Heerden card is heavyweight Donovan Ruddock facing Dillon Carman.

Top Rank working on deal to let Tim Bradley steer around Sadam Ali mandatory challenger

Top Rank is busy trying to put the finishing touches on a November 7th fight between their fighters WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios for the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the fight to take place, Top Rank will need the World Boxing Organization to grant Bradley and exception to steer around his #1 WBO mandatory challenger Sadam Ali, as he’s supposed to be Bradley’s first title challenger.

Top Rank doesn’t want that fight to take place right now, because they prefer matching Bradley against Rios. It’s a fight that would likely draw higher ratings and it’s a fight that HBO Boxing wants. One idea is that instead of Ali getting a world title shot against Bradley, he gets to fight for the WBO interim welterweight title against Jessie Vargas before the end of 2015, according to Dan Rafael.

This is obviously a poor substitute for Ali for getting a world title shot, because it puts another hoop in front of him before he can get a crack at Bradley. The fight also helps Top Rank if Ali and Golden Boy Promotions agrees to the Ali-Vargas fight because Vargas is one of Top Rank’s fighters, so it keeps him busy and puts him in a position where he can earn a rematch against Bradley. Vargas was already beaten by Bradley last June by a lopsided 12 round decision at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Vargas was unhappy with the result of the fight with the referee Pat Russell halting the fight in the last 10 seconds because he thought that he heard the final bell go off rather than it being the 10 second bell.

If Ali wants the payday against Vargas, and if the WBO insists that he must fast him, then it’s a good deal. It seems like it would be better for Ali to take a stay busy fight while he waits for the Bradley-Rios fight to get done with and then face the winner rather than having to fight Vargas to earn a title shot that he already has coming to him.



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