By Craig Daly: IBF light welterweight champion Subriel Matias will make his first defense of his title against former champ Sergey Lipinets on August 26th at a till to be determined venue on Showtime.
Lipinets is an interesting choice for Matias, as he was destroyed by Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis in a sixth-round knockout in April 2021. Boots Ennis sliced through Lipinets like a hot knife through butter, knocking him down in the fourth & sixth rounds to score an effortless knockout.
It wasn’t even sporting, as Ennis completely destroyed Lipinets. Matias could do the same to Lipinets if he fails to use movement to stay away from the hard puncher.
In Lipinets’ last fight, he stopped the past his best, Omar Figueroa Jr in the eighth round last August. While that was a decent comeback with for Lipinets, it didn’t come against a top-10-level contender at 140.
Lipinets briefly held the IBF 140-lb title after beating Akihiro Kondo in 2017. In his next fight in 2018, Lipinets lost his IBF title in a twelve round unanimous decision to Mikey Garcia. Lipinets did inflict a lot of punishment on Mikey, swelling up his face badly.
At the end of the fight, Mikey looked like the loser going by appearances because his face was bloody & swollen from the heavy shots that Lipinets had hit him with throughout the contest.
The selection of the 34-year-old Lipinets (17-2-1, 13 KOs) by the management of Matias (19-1, 19 KOs) foils the hopes of WBC 140-lb champion Regis Prograis of facing him next in a unification fight.
Matias’ management might not have felt comfortable putting him in with arguably the #1 fighter in the light welterweight division in Prograis because we’ve seen the 31-year-old Puerto Rican fighter beaten by Petros Ananyan. That guy is nowhere near the level of Prograis talent-wise.
You can understand perfectly why Matias’ management would choose to match him against Lipinets rather than Prograis because he’s too vulnerable on defense, and his punch resistance isn’t good enough for him to win. In other words, Matias can dish it out, but he can’t take punishment in return.
Matias captured the vacant IBF 140-lb title last February, stopping the previously unbeaten Jeremias Ponce in the fifth round in a fight that initially was competitive but got out of hand by the fourth round.
Lipinets has been fighting just once a year for the last three years, which can’t be good for his skills to keep him sharp.
Mike Coppinger of ESPN is reporting the news of the Matias vs. Lipinets.
