By Scott Gilfoid: The recently beaten lightweight Luke Campbell (12-1, 10 KOs) will be fighting next month on March 26 against the 32-year-old Gary Sykes (28-4, 6 KOs) on the undercard of the Kell Brook vs. Kevin Bizier card at the Sheffield Arena in Sheffield, UK.
The Campbell-Sykes fight will be the co-feature, unbelievably. It’s not a great fight for a co-feature bout. I realize that the 28-year-old Campbell was soundly beaten in his last fight by Yvan Mendy last December by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision, but I would still expect to see better match-making than this for a co-feature bout on the Brook vs. Bizier fight.
It makes little sense if Campbell is going to be thrown ion with a fodder opponent for the Brook vs. Bizier fight. Heck, the main event is bad enough in terms of being a mismatch, but then to add an equally bad mismatch between Campbell and Sykes. But who knows? It might turn out to be a competitive fight between Campbell and Sykes.
I don’t think anyone expected Campbell to lose to the 30-year-old Mendy last December. Before that fight, Mendy had been beaten by the likes of Edis Tatli, Viktor Postol, and Abdoulaye Soukouna x 2.
Campbell’s loss to Mendy drove him out of the top tier of lightweights in the division. It must have been a real buzz-kill for Campbell’s promoter Eddie Hearn, as he had been crowing long and hard about how good Campbell was. Hearn expected big things for him and was going to eventually have him fight for a world title. But with Campbell’s defeat, Hearn has had to back off with his big plans for him.
It’s now about hitting the reset button on Campbell’s career to see if he can start over and fix the mistakes that he made in his loss to Mendy. Frankly, I can’t see Campbell being able to improve upon the flaws he showed against Mendy.
The basic problem that Campbell has is he’s just too easy to hit, and I can’t see him changing that no matter how hard he tries. You’re either talented defensively or you’re not. Unfortunately for Campbell, he’s there to be hit and I see him always being there to be hit no matter how hard he tries.
Campbell has a now trainer in Jorge Rubio, the same guy that trained Amir Khan briefly in 2008 for his fight against Breidis Prescott. After Khan was blasted out in the 1st round by Prescott, Rubio was swapped out for another trainer.
“I’ve made plenty of changes since the Mendy fight,” said Campbell to matchroomsport.com. “I wanted to get straight back into action and I wasn’t interested in an eight or 10 round comeback fight, I wanted to get straight back into big fights and Gary is a fight I can really get my teeth into. Gary will have plenty of support and I’m expecting a tough fight and a great performance.”
Sykes hasn’t exactly been the most active of fighters recently. He fought only once in 2015 in beating Ibrar Riyaz by a 6 round decision. Before that, Sykes was beaten by Liam Walsh by a 12 round decision in November 2014. Sykes was beaten by Terry Flanagan by a 3 round decision in 2012 the lightweight Prizefighter tournament. Sykes also has two defeats at the hands of Gary Buckland. Sykes’ best wins of his career were his two victories over Anthony Crolla.
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