Evgeny Gradovich vs. Jayson Velez on Crawford-Beltran card on 11/29

By Boxing News - 09/30/2014 - Comments

velez5By Dan Ambrose: IBF World featherweight champion Eveny Gradovich (19-0, 9 KOs) will be defending his IBF title against #2 WBC, #12 IBF, #12 WBA, #12 WBO Jayson Velez (22-0, 16 KOs) in the co-feature bout on the Terence Crawford vs. Raymundo Beltran fight card on HBO on November 29th at the CenturyLink Center, in Omaha, Nebraska, USA.

The Gradovich-Velez fight could turn out to be an even better one than the main event between Crawford and Beltran, because Gradovich and Velez will be mixing it up the entire time. With Crawford, you can count on him fighting with his usual counter punching style, and that’s generally less than exciting unless he’s forced to fight like he was in his last fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa last June.

That was one of the rare occasions where Crawford had to brawl in order to win, because Gamboa wouldn’t let him hunt and peck with his usual shots.

“Crawford-Beltran co-feature on @HBOboxing 11/29 is set: Evgeny Gradovich defends 126 title vs Jayson Velez. #boxing @CarlMoretti,” said Dan Rafael on his twitter.

Gradovich. 28, is making his 4th defense of his IBF title after capturing the belt last year in June in defeating Billy Dib by a 12 round split decision. Since then, Gradovich has defeated Mauricio Javier Munoz, Dib in a rematch, and Alexander Miskirtchian.

Velez, 26, is a step up from the guys that Gradovich has been facing, and this could be a really tough fight for him. Gradovich is used to brawling, and that’s what Velez does best. You have to see this fight as a tossup fight because Gradovich hasn’t been all that impressive in some of his fights, especially against Dib.

Velez has been matched pretty softly though during his career, and you can’t really get a good gauge of how well he’ll do against his first quality opponent in Gradovich. In Velez’s last four fights, he’s beaten Miguel Soto, Dat Nguyen, Salvador Sanchez and Leivi Brea.



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