By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten No.8 IBF featherweight contender Josh Warrington (21-0, 4 KOs) will be putting his WBC International and Commonwealth featherweight straps on the line tonight against No.9 IBF Joel Brunker (28-1, 16 KOs) in a 12 round bout at the First Direct Arena, Leeds, UK.
It’s a match pitting the light hitting 24-year-old Warrington against a slightly better puncher in 29-year-old Brunker from Australia. While the fight is not that big of a deal, the outcome of the fight is an important one for Warrington because if he wins and looks good, he could get a world title shot against IBF featherweight champion Lee Selby.
Warrington and Selby are both with Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport promotional company, so a fight between those two guys is an obvious one to make for Hearn. I mean, I don’t see how Hearn doesn’t make that fight, even though there are arguably many more deserving contenders that should be getting a title shot against Selby rather than the untested and unproven Warrington.
I’d personally prefer to see Selby fight the likes of Eric Hunter, Jonathan Barros and Jayson Velez rather than seeing a mismatch between Selby and the badly inexperienced Warrington.
Brunker is kind of a poor choice of an opponent for Warrington, because he was recently knocked out in the 9th round just last October by Selby. Yeah, Brunker rebounded from the loss to defeat 29-year-old journeyman fighter Rey Laspinas (20-11-5, 12 KOs) last February, but look at the guy’s record? I mean, how is that a good enough win for Brunker to be fighting an important fight like the Warrington clash?
Did Brunker get the fight against Warrington simply because he was beaten by Selby and beat Laspinas? Does Brunker get a rematch with Selby if he beats Warrington, or is only Warrington the only one with a shot at getting the Selby fight?
I for one don’t want to see a rematch between Selby and Brunker, especially given that Selby still hasn’t faced anyone talented yet in the featherweight division. He doesn’t seem to be in a rush to face the likes of Gary Russell Jr., Vasyl Lomachenko, Nicholas Walters, Jesus Andres Cuellar or Leo Santa Cruz.
At 28, I don’t know what Selby is waiting for? Is he waiting for old age to set in before he faces those guys are what?
“I think that Warrington’s work rate is so high and with his confidence, belief and with the fans behind him, I can see him wearing him [Brunker] down,” IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook said via skysports.com.
Brook is with Matchroom Sport too, the same promoters as Warrington, so I’ve got to exclude Brook’s opinion about the fight as being valuable to predict the outcome.
Martin Murray faces Jose Miguel Torres for vacant WBA Inter-Continental super middleweight title
Former three-time world title challenger Martin Murray (32-2-1, 14 KOs) will be facing 36-year-old journeyman Jose Miguel Torres (31-6, 27 KOs) in a scheduled 12 round fight for the vacant WBA Inter-Continental super middleweight on the undercard of the Warrington-Brunker fight.
I’m still trying to figure out why the 32-year-old Murray is fighting a middleweight for this trinket rather than someone in the super middleweight division, but he’s not the one who picked him out. It’s likely that Hearn selected the Colombian Torres, and I guess the idea is he won’t have the size to beat #10 WBC, #15 WBO Murray like an actual top 15 super middleweight contender would.
Murray has always been considered huge for the middleweight division, which is why he recently moved up to the 168lb division following his 11th round knockout loss to IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last February. It wasn’t a good showing for Murray, as he ran around the ring, holding and doing whatever he could to avoid getting caught by Golovkin.
It was like watching a game of tag, but with only one guy doing the running in Murray. As things turned out, Murray was knocked down three times by Golovkin in getting dropped twice in the 4th and once in the 10th before the mismatch was mercifully stopped in the 11th round with Murray taking heavy punishment against the ropes.
Since that loss, Murray has beaten two obscure fighters named George Beroshvili and Mirzet Bajrektarevic. What’s interesting about those fights is that both of those contests took place in the light heavyweight division, which makes me wonder whether Murray has really been a light heavyweight all these years during his time when he fought at middleweight.
He’s always looked huge for his fights at middleweight, so I’m really not surprised that his last two fights have been in the light heavyweight division. Murray and Torres did both make weight for the fight though in coming in at 167 pounds respectively.
Tony Bellew faces Arturs Kulikauskis in 8 round contest
#3 WBO, #7 WBA, #9 WBC cruiserweight contender Tony Bellew (24-2-1, 15 KOs) will be facing 24-year-old journeyman Arturs Kulikauskis (16-26-5, 8 KOs) in a nice little mismatch scheduled for 8 rounds on the Warrington vs. Brunker undercard.
This fight will only last as long as the 32-year-old Bellew wants it to last. Given the talk that Bellew has been doing recently about wanting to take his opponent’s head off in this fight, it’s not likely to last long. Bellew wants to make an example of his over-matched opponent Kulikauskis for some reason.
I’m not exactly sure why. I mean, the whole idea in facing a fodder opponent like Kulikauskis is to get in rounds and stay busy. As such, why is Bellew hell bent on wiping the poor guy out rather than getting in rounds so that he can be ready to face the winner of the Yoan Pablo Hernandez vs. Victor Ramirez fight for the IBF cruiserweight title.
This will be Bellew’s fifth fight at cruiserweight since moving up to the weight class in 2014. He’s beaten Valery Brudov, Julio Cesar Dos Santos, Nathan Cleverly and Ivica Bacurin.
For some reason, Bellew’s promoter Eddie Hearn hasn’t matched him up against the talented cruiserweights in the division like Krzysztof Glowacki, Olesandr Usyk, Dmitry Kudryashov, Ilunga Makabu, Noel Gevor, Rakhim Chakhkiev, Ola Afolabi, Beibut Shumenov, Krzystof Wlodarczyk or Thabiso Mchunu.
I don’t understand why Bellew hasn’t been matched up against at least one of those guys as of yet. I mean, how do you not match Bellew up against one or more of those fighters at this point?
The match-making that Hearn has been doing for Bellew has been soft so far since he moved up to the cruiserweight division, and it looks like it’s going to stay soft until he gets a title shot against arguably the weakest of the cruiserweight champions in Yoan Pablo Hernandez. I see him as by far the worst of the current champions. I rate the other champions Denis Lebedev, Glowacki, and Grigory Drozd as far better fighters than Hernandez.
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