By Dan Ambrose: Shawn Porter (29-2-1, 17 KOs) will be receiving a purse of $1.25 million to defend his WBC welterweight title tonight against Yordenis Ugas (23-3, 11 KOs) on Premier Boxing Champions on FOX & FOX Deportes from the Dignity Health Sports Park, in Carson, California.
Porter’s opponent 32-year-old Ugas will be getting $300,000 to challenge for the title. That’s pretty good money for a fighter whose best career win was against Thomas Dulorme in 2017.
The paydays for Porter are going to increase when/if he faces WBA Super World champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman, IBF champ Errol Spence Jr. or WBA ‘regular’ champion Manny Pacquiao. Porter has sights set on fighting the winner of Spence vs. Mikey Garcia if he defeats Ugas tonight.
This fight is predictable in how its going to be conducted. Porter is going to put some major pressure on Ugas to wear him down, and try and stop him. Ugas will do well at times with technical ability, but it’s going to difficult for him to try and keep Porter off of him for any length of time. Ugas likes to keep the action on the outside, and fight at a slow pace. That’s not how Porter is going to fight him. He’s going to attack Ugas like he did his last opponent Danny Garcia, and force him to fight in a furious manner that’s going to wear him out. Porter having problems making weight last Friday could give Ugas his best shot at winning the fight. Porter was nearly two pounds over the welterweight limit in coming in at 148.8 lbs at the weigh-in.
To Porter’s credit, he quickly took the weight off, and returned to the scales to make weight at 146.8 lbs. We don’t know how the extra effort that Porter had to put in to take off the two lbs will effect him tonight. You don’t like to see fighters having to work out hard for close to two hours the day before the fight to lose weight. If Porter is played out from losing weight, he’s going to lose tonight. Porter, 31, needs to consider moving up in weight to 154 to make it easier on his body in the future. On the bright side, Shawn will have an excuse to tell his boxing fans if he loses tonight to Ugas. He can blame it on the weight. Without question, it would hurt Porter’s career, and temporarily ruin his chances of fighting the other welterweight champions. Porter will still get a crack at Errol Spence, Keith Thurman and possibly Manny Pacquiao even if he loses tonight, but it wont help him get those fights soon.
Ugas still fights like an amateur in being able to stay on the outside and box his opponents. In Ugas’ three defeats as a pro, he’s faced guys that had a pro style of fighting that wore him down with pressure. That’s Porter will be looking to do tonight. Ugas has the size on Porter if he could just somehow keep him at range in order to take advantage. That’s not how Porter fights though. He’s going to get past Ugas’ long reach repeatedly tonight, and he’s going to force the long-armed Cuban to try and fight him at close range. Inside fight is going to greatly favor Porter. Ugas will have to try and figure something out to negate Porter’s inside work. You can expect a lot of clinching from Ugas, and wrestling to keep Porter from getting his shots off. The referee is going to have a lot of work to do in this fight.
Other purses for tonight’s card on FOX are as follows:
Abel Ramos $50,000 vs. Francisco Santana $50,000
Efe Ajagba $8000, Amir Mansour $25,000
Damien Vazquez $15,000 vs. Juan Carlos Payano $5,000
Eimantas Stanionis $8,000 vs. Samuel Figueroa $10,000
Robert Guerrero $25,000 vs. Hevinson Herrera $1,000
Jesus Cuellar $40,000 vs. Carlos Padilla $1,000
One of those names is former two division world champion Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero (34-6-1, 19 KOs), who will be fighting journeyman Hevinson Herrera (24-16-1, 18 KOs) in a 10 round fight on the undercard. For a former world champion like Guerrero to be getting just $25,000 for his fight with Herrera, it’s kind of surprising. One would think that Guerrero would get more than that. He was one of the top fighters in boxing not too long ago, and now he’s getting only $25,000 for his fight with Herrera. You have to wonder how much money Marcos Maidana will make when he returns to the ring in the near future.
This is Guerrero’s second fight of his comeback after being retired from boxing from July 2017 to December 2018. Guerrero lost three fights in a row to Danny Garcia, David Emanuel Peralta and Omar Figueroa Jr. in 2016 to 2017. Guerrero launched his comeback last December in stopping journeyman Adam Mate (28-14, 21 KOs) on the undercard of Deontay Wilder vs Tyson Fury at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. If Guerrero can keep winning long enough to get a high ranking at 147, he’ll eventually get a title shot against one of the welterweight champions. The only question is whether Guerrero can keep winning once he’s asked to face a contender or two to earn a title shot.