By Matt Lieberman: The full undercard for the Errol Spence Jr. vs. Shawn Porter card will be announced this Tuesday for the Fox Sports Pay-Per-View card on September 28 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Anthony Dirrell defends his WBC super middleweight title against former WBC champion David Benavidez in the co-feature bout.
The 34-year-old Dirrell (33-1-1, 24 KOs) has got a real fight on his hands against the heavy-handed 6’2″ Benavidez (21-0, 18 KOs), because this is a guy that is looking invincible right now. Dirrell is coming off of one of his worst performances of his career against Avni Yildirim last February. Anthony squeaked it out with a narrow 10th round technical decision, but it could have gone the other way.
The match was stopped due to Dirrell suffering a cut over his left eye from a clash of heads. The cut occurred in round seven, and it steadily worsened until the ringside doctor advised for the contest to be stopped. The judges scored it 96-94, 96-94 for Dirrell, and 98-92 for Yildirim. This was a fight that rated a rematch, but Dirrell moved on rather than risk facing Yildirim a second time.
Here are the other fights on the undercard:
- Mario Barrios vs. Batyr Akhmedov
- Josesito Lopez vs. John Molina Jr.
- Robert Guerrero vs. TBA
- Joey Spencer vs. TBA
Josesito Lopez (36-9, 19 KOs) will be looking to go to war with the hard hitting Molina Jr. (30-8, 24 KOs) in their 10 round fight. These are both huge punchers, who don’t know how to take a backwards step. Lopez, 35, is coming off of a 12 round majority decision loss to former WBA Super World welterweight champion Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman (29-1, 22 KOs) on January 26. That fight was a competitive one with Thurman dropping Josesito in round two, but then running into trouble in the seventh when Lopez hurt him.
Thurman was on the brink of being halted in round seven, and was quite fortunate that the round ended before Josesito could finish him. After that round, Thurman boxed smart, and kept out of harm’s way for the most part. Still, Lopez kept the pressure on him the entire time, and forced Thurman to fight defensively. Lopez exposed how much of Thurman’s game that he’d lost from his two years out of the ring.
Molina, 36, lost his last fight to Omar Figueroa Jr. by a 10 round unanimous decision last February. Figueroa’s high work rate gave Molina a lot of problems, and he wasn’t able to hurt him with heavy shots. Molina landed a lot of punches, but Figueroa took them well, and returned fire. The judges’ scored it 97-93, 99-91 and 98-92.
Robert Guerrero looking good
Former two division world champion Robert ‘The Ghost’ Guerrero (35-6-1, 20 KOs) is coming into the September 28 card with a nice two-fight winning streak going for him. He doesn’t have an opponent picked out yet, but he’s not expected to take on dangerous guy. Guerrero hasn’t been able to adjust to fighting at welterweight. The last six years have been unkind to Guerrero. Although he got a nice payday against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2013, he’s lost to Thurman, Danny Garcia, David Emanuel Peralta, and Figueroa.