By Scott Gilfoid: In a less than thrilling card on September 8th, fringe light heavyweight contender Tony Bellew (17-1, 11 KO’s) mixes it up with former world title challenger Colombian Edison Miranda (35-7, 30 KO’s) at the Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill, in London, United Kingdom.

The card needs to be beefed up in a major way because from top to bottom there’s not one interesting fight on entire card.

Besides the Bellew-Miranda fight, there’s former British and Commonwealth middleweight champion Darren Barker (23-1, 14 KO’s) facing 36-year-old Italian Simone Rutolo (34-3, 15 KO’s) in a fight for the vacant IBF Inter-Continental middleweight title.

Bellew was beaten last year by WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly. Bellew ran out of gas in the last three rounds and gave away what could have been a win in doing so.

In his last fight, Bellew bounced back beating domestic level fighter Danny McIntosh by a 5th round TKO last April.

Rutolo has only fought three times in the last four years, which should tell you all you need to know about this mismatch.

At 30, you’d like to think that Barker was well pas the stage where he’s fighting obscure 2nd tier opposition like Rutolo, but I guess not. I guess this is a reaction by Barker’s team from him being blasted out by WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez in an 11th round TKO last October. But come on, Barker doesn’t need to be put back on training wheels just because he got spanked by Martinez. That was a given that Barker was going to get knocked out in that fight as soon as it was signed. Barker should just be happy that he didn’t get knocked out in the first few rounds because that would have been a distinct possibility had Barker come to fight Martinez instead of staying on the outside and just boxing for as long as possible.

Rutolo has no chance in this fight, and it’s sad that it was made in the first place.