By Allan Fox: The International Boxing Federation has ordered an IBF 147 pound title eliminator between Konstantin Ponomarev (32-0, 13 KOs) and Carlos Ocampo (21-0, 12 KOs) to pick out the next mandatory challenger for IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. (22-0, 19 KOs), according to Dan Rafael. Spence won’t be facing the winner of the Ponomarev-Ocampo fight next, however. Spence plans on fighting in three months from now in September in a fight in Dallas, Texas.
This will be a voluntary defense for Spence. It’s unclear who Spence’s management from Premier Boxing Champions will select. If it’s someone from the IBF’s top 15, then it could be Luis Collazo. He’s with PBC, and he’s rated No.4 by the IBF. It would be a tough fight for a voluntary defense for the 27-year-old Spence, to be sure, but it would give him an opponent that many of the casual boxing fans are familiar with at least. Spence has got to be able to beat guys like Collazo for him to dominate the welterweight division like he wants to.
Ponomarev, 24, and Ocampo are on board with the IBF’s eliminator bout. It makes sense for them to fight in the eliminator, as they would likely wait a long, long time if they were to sit back and count on Spence Jr. to pick them out for one of his voluntary defenses for his IBF belt.
The negotiations need to be done by the management of Ponomarev and Ocampo by June 19 to avert a purse bid. Ponomarev is promoted by Top Rank. The winner of this fight is going to have a lot of problems trying to defeat Spence, as neither guy can punch. They’ll have to try and keep from getting hit by Spence, which may prove to be impossible.
Ocampo is lanky fighter from Ensenada, Mexico. Ocampo has recent wins over Alvaro Robles, Daniel Echeverria, Charlie Navarro, Rames Agaton, Jorge Paez Jr. and Johnny Navarette. Ocampo likes to crowd his opponents and fight on the inside, which explains why he doesn’t have a lot of knockouts on his record. Ocampo fights a lot like Andre Ward, except doesn’t hold on the inside. He mainly throws punches. Ocampo is always working when he’s in close.
The Top Rank promoted Ponomarev comes from Miass, Russia. He’s been a pro since 2010. Ponomarev has recent victories over Ed Paredes, Silverio Ortiz, Brad Solomon, Rames Agaton, Mikael Zewski, Steve Claggett and Cosme Rivera. Ponomarev’s 8 round unanimous decision win over Paredes was far from a dominating performance. Ponomarev won the fight, but he gave some rounds and took big shots.
Ponomarev will need to do a lot better against Errol Spence Jr. if he doesn’t want to get destroyed. Top Rank sees something in Ponomarev that they feel makes him worth being in their stable of fighters. It might be better if Ponomarev moves down to 140, because his lack of punching power is going to be a real problem for him as his career progresses in the welterweight division. Ponomarev won’t be able to keep Spence off of him with his weak shots.
Ocampo’s inside fighting is going to make it tough on Ponomarev, because the Mexican fighter is really good at closing the distance and forcing his opponents to fight on the inside whether they like it or not. We could end up seeing Ponomarev struggle in the same way that Sergey Kovalev struggled last November in his fight against Andre Ward after he took the fight to the inside. Against guys like Ocampo, you’ve got to be able to fight in close otherwise you’re going to be in for a long night. I’ve never seen Ponomarev fight on the inside against anyone. Ponomarev prefers to stay on the outside and box his opponents. That’s where he’s at his best.
Spence will be tough for either of these guys. Spence is a very good inside fighter with excellent punching power. If Ocampo tries to fight Spence on the inside, he could wind up being sorry for having done so. Spence will likely slice through Ocampo in close in the same way he did Chris Algieri last year. In fact, Ocampo and Algieri are both built the same with their tall and slender physiques. The power between those two guys is nearly identical.
The IBF’s rankings aren’t too good right now at welterweight. There are a lot of weaker contenders that probably shouldn’t be ranked in the top 15 at all. When you’re best contender is the top 15 is Luis Collazo, then it tells you a little about how lacking the IBF’s ratings are right now. Ocampo and Ponomarev are both flawed fighters that lack the punching power to go far in the welterweight division in my estimation. It’ll be interesting to see which of the two emerges as the winner of heir IBF eliminator bout. On paper, I’d say Ponomarev will probably be the favorite going into their fight, but you can’t count out Ocampo due to his inside fighting skills. Ponomarev hasn’t fought anyone like Ocampo before during his short career, and it’s going to be tough for him to deal with 12 rounds of inside fighting.
Spence recently beat IBF 147 pound champion Kell “Special K” Brook by an 11th round knockout on May 27 at Bramall Lane in Sheffield, England. Spence started off slowly in the first 6 rounds, but then he broke Brook’s left eye socket around the 7th round, and cruised to a victory in stopping the 31-year-old British fighter in the 11th. There’s some disagreement among boxing fans about what led to Brook quitting on one knee in the 11th. While some fans believe it was the broken left eye socket he had sustained, other boxing fans feel that it was the body shots that Spence landed that played a major role in weakening Brook.
There’s also the tremendous amount of weight that Brook had to lose during training camp to get ready for the Spence fight. Brook lost between 30-40 pounds during training camp. That’s a lot of weight for a fighter to lose to get down to their fighting weight. You can blame Brook for letting himself go so badly after his 5th round knockout loss to middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last September. It was the wrong time for Brook to gain a bunch of weight. With Brook having to defend his IBF title against a dangerous fighter like Spence, Brook should have stayed in shape after his loss to GGG, and that would have made it a lot easier for Brook to get down to 147. The time to gain weight is when a fighter has a voluntary defense to make, not when they’re about to fight a mandatory challenger. In hindsight, Brook made a huge mistake in putting the weight on.