Andrew Cancio battles Manny Rojas on July 16 on ESPN

By Boxing News - 06/02/2020 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA super World super featherweight champion Andrew ‘El Chango’ Cancio will be fighting next month against Manny Robles (18-4, 5 KOs) on July 16 on ESPN in Las Vegas, Nevada.

@MikeCoppinger is saying the Cancio vs. Robles fight will be on an undercard on ESPN on July 16.

This will be the 31-year-old Cancio’s debut for Top Rank Boxing, who signed him after Golden Boy Promotions let him go after his seventh-round stoppage loss to Rene Alvarado last November.

Golden Boy Promotions may have made a mistake in letting Cancio go, as only lost the fight to Alvarado, and that was due to a cut. Top Rank can capitalize on this with them signing Cancio and looking to rebuild him.

Golden Boy could have done the same thing if they’d kept Cancio and put him in a few fights to build back his confidence. The fact that Cancio had recently beaten Alberto Machado twice suggests that Golden Boy may have made a mistake in letting him go.

This should be an exciting fight to see how Cancio fights after his disappointing loss to Alvarado (32-8, 21 KOs) in Indio, California. The 31-year-old Nicaraguan Alvarez is an excellent fighter, and there’s no shame in Cancio losing to him.

A big part of Cancio’s loss was the cut that he suffered over his left eye in round three. After sustaining that cut, Cancio wasn’t the same fighter that we’d seen defeat WBA World 130-pound champion Alberto ‘El Explosivo’ Machado (22-2, 18 KOs). Cancio had beaten Alvarado by an eighth-round knockout in 2015.

Machado is someone that would likely destroy Alvarado, but with a cut that might change how things would go.

Last year, Cancio shocked the world in destroying the previously unbeaten knockout artist Machado by a fourth-round stoppage in their first fight in February 2019.

Cancio was dropped in round one by Machado, and things looked bleak for him heading into the second round. In the fourth, Cancio came on strong and dropped Machado three times to get the knockout.

A lot of fans couldn’t believe it though, as Cancio was seen as having no chance of beating Machado heading into that match.

Heading into the Cancio-Machado rematch last year in June 2019, people expected Machado to avenge his defeat and show that his loss was just a fluke thing. However, Cancio dominated Machado in knocking him out in the third round with a body shot.

The fight was a costly one for Cancio, seeing that he suffered cuts over both eyes in the contest.

He was cut over his left eye in round one, and his right eye in the second round. Both cuts were from head-butts, which did more damage to Cancio than they did Machado.

The cuts came back to haunt Cancio, though, as the scar tissue over his left eye opened up in the second round in his fight against Rene Alvarado, making it impossible for him to see out of the eye.

Before the pandemic, Cancio had been previously scheduled to fight Tyler McCreary on April 25 on the undercard of the bantamweight unification match between Naoya Inoue and John Riel Casimero.

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