By Kenneth Friedman: Eddie Hearn hopes to set up a fight between EBU welterweight champion David Avanesyan and Josh Kelly for this year. Getting the 26-year-old Kelly to agree to the fight with Avaneysan may prove to be impossible, given how poor Josh has looked in his last two fights against Ray Robinson and Wiston Campos.
If the 2016 Olympian Kelly (10-0-1, 6 KOs) elects not to ake the dangerous fight against the talented Russsian fighter Avanesyan, then Hearn’s backup plan is to schedule a fight between 2016 Olympic gold medalist Daniyar Yeleussinov and Avanesyan for the Daniel Jacobs vs. Gabe Rosado card on November 27th.
If Avanesyan does face Kelly, Hearn will match Yeleussinov against former IBF/WBA light-welterweight champion Julius Indongo (23-2, 12 KOs) on November 27th DAZN.
Hearn wants Yeleussinov vs. Indongo on Nov.27
The 37-year-old southpaw Indongo has lost two out of his last three fights in knockout defeats against Terence Crawford and Regis Prograis.
The 29-year-old ‘Kazakh Thunder’ Yeleussinov will be fighting on the November 27th DAZN card whether he faces Avanesyyan or not. Hearn needs to get Yeleussinov out this year, considering that he hasn’t fought since last December.
“Daniyar Yeleussinov will go on the Daniel Jacobs card [on November 27th. I’m going to be looking to have him go against [Julius] Indongo or Avanesyan if Josh Kelly doesn’t take the Avanesyan fight,” said Hearn to IFL TV.
“I think right now it’s a matter of when Josh Kelly will be ready to fight Avanesyan. And I want him to go straight into that fight.
I think it’s important for him to fight Avanesyan, and I’m talking to Adam Booth about it at the moment. That’s the plan, yeah,” said Hearn when asked if we could see the Avanesyan first Kelly fight this year.
Yeleussinov’s age is up there for a professional just starting, and Hearn needs to get him busy. It won’t work in Yeleussinov’s favor if he’s brought along at a snail’s pace and doesn’t take any meaningful fights for six to eight years.
Yeleussinov can’t afford to waitÂ
Given Daniyar’s advanced age, he’s got to hit the ground running the same way Vasily Lomachenko did, and it doesn’t work out, then it wasn’t meant to be. At 29, Yeleussinov is as good as he’s ever going to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8C2tmUUPcs
It would be nice to see Yeleussinov fight a rematch with Kelly, who he beat in the 2016 Olympics in shutting him out. That was four years ago, and perhaps Kelly has improved enough to avenge his loss to Yeleussinov now that they’re both in the pro ranks.
Yeleussinov is another high-risk fighter that Kelly could have problems with, and lose. Kelly got very lucky with the scoring in his 10 round draw against Ray Robinson on June 1st last year on Anthony Joshua vs. Andy Ruiz Jr undercard at Madison Square Garden in New York.
If there weren’t so much visibility for the Joshua-Ruiz card, Kelly’s questionable draw against Robinson would have gone under the radar of fans and not been talked about. But many boxing fans saw the fight, and they didn’t like how the judges scored the Kelly vs. Robinson fight. They had Robinson winning comfortably. He exposed Kelly in that fight in the same way Yeleussinov did in the 2016 Olympics.
Is Kelly ducking Avanesyan?
Jacobs-Rosado will be shown on DAZN from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Hollywood, Florida. That card badly needs some good fights to help create some interest because the main event is terribly poor. Many of the boxing fans have been complaining since the fight was announced last Friday.
You can’t blame Kelly if he doesn’t want to fight Avanesyan (26-3-1, 14 KOs) because it’s a bad match-up for him, and he could get knocked out by him. Avanesyan has improved his punching power since 2019, and he’s scored three consecutive knockouts. His body punching is especially impressive.
Kelly is good at moving his head to dodge shots, but he gets hit to the body pretty easily. That’s one area that he can’t move out of the way of his opponents’ shots.