By Scott Gilfoid: Tony “Bomber” Bellew will be making his first defense of his WBC World cruiserweight title on October 15 against non-contender BJ Flores at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, England. It looks like the World Boxing Council decided to let the 33-year-old Bellew take a voluntary defense against the 37-year-old Flores rather forcing him to fight his #1 WBC contender Mairis Briedis. That’s a good thing for Bellew, beause he very likely would have been steamrolled by Brieidis in lightning fashion. BJ Flores is currently ranked No.26 by the WBC. My guess is we’ll soon see Flores pushed up to at least the No.15 spot in the WBC’s rankings very, very soon. If not, it would be quite sad that Bellew is defending against a guy ranked No.26. But it’s a sad match-up no matter where the WBC moves Flores to in their rankings, because he looked horrible in losing to Beibut Shumenov two fights ago.
Bellew won the vacant WBC title last May in defending Illunga Makabu by a 3rd round knockout in Liverpool, England. After the fight, Bellew stood up like a prize-winning rooster, crowing about his win, saying that he’s the best cruiserweight in the world.
The words sounded nice, but unfortunately it didn’t make sense. I mean, for Bellew to be the best cruiserweight in the world, he would have to prove it against the arguably more talented fighters in the division like Denis Lebedev, Krzystof Glowacki, Oleksandr Usyk, Grigory Drozd, Marco Huck, Murat Gassiev and Brieidis. Those guys are much better fighters than Makabu.