By Scott Gilfoid: Brian Rose is confident that former WBA/WBO 154 lb champion Demetrius ‘Boo Boo’ Andrade (25-0, 16 KOs) will defeat Walter Kautondokwa (17-0, 16 KOs) this Saturday night to capture the vacant World Boxing Organization junior middleweight title at on Matchroom Boxing USA promoter Eddie Hearn’s card on DAZN at the TD Garden in Boston, Mass.
Rose fought Andrade four years ago, and was stopped in the 7th round in June 2014. That fight was enough to make a believer out of the 33-year-old Rose, whose own career hasn’t gone well since then with a 1st round knockout loss to journeyman Carson Jones in 2015 and losses to Matthew Macklin and Jack Arnfield.
“There’s no doubt that he will win that WBO belt on Saturday,” Rose said to skysports.com about Andrade. As long as his inactivity doesn’t take effect, there’s no doubt he will go on to great things and, for me, be one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world.”
Rose goes on to say that he thinks Andrade has the talent to box his way to wins over Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin. Rose is totally sold on Andrade’s talent. I’m not sure that too many boxing fans would agree with his opinion that Andrade, 30, defeats the likes of GGG and Canelo. The evidence that suggests that Andrade wouldn’t beat Canelo and Golovkin is there in his fight against Jack Culcay. After jumping out to a big lead in the first half of the fight with Culcay, Andrade gassed out in the second half and barely won the fight by a 12 round split decision.
Andrade really labored in the second half of the fight against a guy who lacks punching power. Had that been Golovkin or Canelo inside the ring with him, he likely would have lost and lost badly. Andrade is a good fighter, to be sure, but he;s crippled his own career by not being active enough for whatever reason. With that said, Andrade has an excellent chance of defeating Kautondokwa on Saturday. The reason for that is Kautondokwa doesn’t have the experience going for him to be messing with a fighter like Andrade. Kautondowa’s best opponents of his short five year pro career have come against these guys: Billi Facundo Godoy and Obodai Sai. Those are not world class fighters, which would explain why Kautondokwa was able to KO them. I hate to say it but Kautondokwa’s entire resume is filled with dreadful fodder. You don’t like to see sanctioning bodies ranking fighters that have no experience.
He’s simply brilliant, there’s no doubt,” Rose said about Andrade in continuing to smother him with love.
I think Rose is going a little bit overboard with the compliments of Andrade, isn’t it? I mean, Andrade is a decent fighter, but he’s done nothing at middleweight other than beat little known Alantez Fox last year. Andrade has now been out of the ring for 11 months now, and that’s on top of the other inactivity that he’s had since 2015.