By Chris Williams: The November 5th card headed by Alfredo Angulo vs. James Kirkland is somewhat decent card, but not really blistering hot like some people think it is. I think Angulo is a really good fighter, but Kirkland was already exposed Nobuhiro Ishida last April in a 1st round knockout. Kirkland has come back from that defeat to wipe out two 3rd tier fighters, but I don’t really count those wins because of how awful his opposition.

Angulo has fought only once in the past year, beating a 2nd tier fighter Joseph Gomez by a 1st round knockout last August. Angulo wants to fight for the title against WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez, but he’s going to have to wait in line a little while longer because he’s ranked #2 and Vanes Martirosyan has the number #1 ranking. Angulo probably has another year or so of waiting before he gets his shot.

I expect Angulo to beat Kirkland, because of how bad Kirkland’s chin and defense is. All Angulo has to do is come at him hard in the 1st round and we’ll likely see Kirkland hitting the canvas over and over again.

The undercard fight between middleweight contender Peter Quillin (25-0, 19 KO’s) and Craig McEwan (19-1, 10 KO’s) also doesn’t thrill me that much. Quillin, 6’1″, is huge for a middleweight and only recently moved down in weight from super middleweight to middleweight. You can probably guess why. Quillin would have had huge problems trying to beat the best super middleweights with his limited skillset, but at middleweight, which is one of the worst divisions in boxing, Quillin actually has a chance to pick up a paper title at some point in the future.

Quillin mainly throws right hand bombs, has no inside game whatsoever and doesn’t punch in combinations. He’s limited in what he can do in the ring. However, it doesn’t really matter because McEwan is coming off of a bad 10th round knockout loss to Andy Lee, so Quillin has a reasonable chance of winning based on that. McEwan isn’t a big puncher and doesn’t fight well on the inside, which means Quillin is fairly safe here. Quillin was badly hurt in his fight with Dianiso Miranda three years ago in 2008. That’s the only really puncher that Quillin has faced and he looked awful. I can’t see Quillin being able to make the 160 pound weight limit for more than a couple of years at best, because like I said, he was a huge super middleweight and now now he’s been moved to middleweight to give him a fighting chance to win a title. It’s like taking Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and moving him to 154 pounds. It’s not something that will last.