Notebook: Hitchins plans to outclass Zepeda, wants Teofimo
Canelo-Charlo officials named; Teraji, Nakatani retain titles; Jack to go for belt in 4th division; purse bids canceled; Quick hits; Show and tell
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Junior welterweight Richardson Hitchins is a young fighter on the rise still carving out his place, but whatever experience he may lack in the professional ranks he has the confidence and swagger of a veteran champion.
He will take on the most notable opponent of his career in former world title challenger and longtime contender Jose Zepeda in the main event of the Matchroom Boxing card on Saturday (DAZN, 8 p.m. ET) at the Caribe Royale Resort in Orlando, Florida.
“Winning is No. 1, of course, but to get the big fights I have to win and dominate,” Hitchins said. “I’m ready for the champions because when you look at (WBC titlist Regis) Prograis or (unified lightweight champion Devin) Haney, those are guys that I am a nightmare for. I have size, reach, superb defense. I can damn near feel when a guy is about to punch.
“So, when you have a guy like that against a guy that doesn’t know how to defend themselves, it kind of makes it tricky for them, because I’ve been in there with guys that just stand in front of you and don’t have the ability. You get in front of a guy like Shakur Stevenson — that turns boxing into a math problem. It’s different and that’s what you face with me. I can bring that puzzle that people can’t solve. It’s algebra in the ring.”
Hitchins (16-0, 7 KOs), 25, of Brooklyn, New York, who was a 2016 Olympian for Haiti, where his family is from, has beaten some reputable opponents in former junior lightweight titlist Argenis Mendez, onetime prospect Malik Hawkins and then-unbeaten prospect John Bauza, whom he dropped twice, in a shutout 10-round decision in an absolute demolition in his last fight in February.
Zepeda (37-3, 28 KOs), 34, a southpaw from La Puente, California, however, is on another level. He is a three-time world title challenger (twice at junior welterweight and once at lightweight) with vast experience and wins over former titleholders Ivan Baranchyk (in the 2020 fight of the year) and Jose Pedraza.
Many thought Zepeda deserved the decision when he challenged then-WBC junior welterweight titlist Jose Ramirez in 2019. Two fights ago, in November, Zepeda gave a good account of himself in an 11th-round knockout loss to Prograis for the vacant WBC title.
“Jose is confident. He’s put people to sleep, out, first round KOs, had the fight of the year in 2020 with Baranchyk,” Hitchins said. “And then there’s people now saying, ‘OK let’s see how Richardson handles Zepeda.’
“It’s just my job to show him that I am on a different level to him. He’s going to try to use his experience to try to land his power (and) pressure me. Boxing is a sport where you must be smart. He’s a tough fighter but he’s not a durable one because he’s been down numerous times and I feel the mistake that they cannot make with me is overlooking my power. I’m a very sharp, powerful fighter. My record may not show it, but if you pay attention, it shows I am punching.”
Hitchins was scheduled to fight Montana Love on July 15 in Detroit on the Alycia Baumgardner-Christina Linardatou rematch card, but Love (18-1-1, 9 KOs), 28, a southpaw from Cleveland, pulled out with a supposed rib injury, which delayed Hitchins’ next fight.
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Love declined to reschedule. Hitchins manager Keith Connolly believes that Love was not really hurt. Still, Connolly said he was pleased to get what he thinks is an even better opponent for Hitchins in Zepeda.
“(Zepeda is) definitely the hardest fighter he’s had to face,” Connolly said. “I think it’s actually a harder fight than Montana Love. He hits harder; he’s got more experience. I think Zepeda wants this fight. I don’t think Montana Love ever wanted the Hitchins fight. So, I think we’re fighting a guy that’s hungry, has a lot of experience and is dangerous. But that’s the perfect situation to put Hitchins in because I think he’s the type of fighter that loves the spotlight and is going to do better against better opponents. He’s gonna shine. He can’t wait.”
And here’s more from Mr. Confidence;
“I’m a way smarter boxer than Jose,” Hitchins said. “He’s one-dimensional and I just feel I’ll show levels. I must be smart and show him, yeah, this kid knows what he is on. I think when I am in there, he will see that. Boxing is all about timing, everything I do is about doing it at the right time.”
Hitchins would love a shot at the winner of the probable Prograis-Haney fight. And he would also love a shot at lineal/WBO champion Teofimo Lopez.
“(Lopez) beat the man (Josh Taylor) at 140 and I feel I’m the uncrowned king at 140,” Hitchins said. “And that would be a great fight.”
Connolly said he would welcome a fight for Hitchins against the Prograis-Haney winner or Lopez.
“I think (Hitchins is) a pound-for-pound-type talent,” Connolly said. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the 140-pound division that he can’t beat. Maybe he doesn’t beat them. He’s got to prove it. But I don’t think there’s anybody in that division you would say, ‘Oh, he has no chance in that fight.’ This kid has pound-for-pound-type skills. Hitchins is special and I think in the next year he will win a title in the 140 division.”
Among other fights on the card:
WBC/WBA women’s welterweight champion Jessica McCaskill (12-3, 5 KOs), 39, of Chicago, will fight WBO titlist Sandy Ryan (6-1, 2 KOs), 30, of England, in a unification bout.
Middleweight up-and-comer Austin “Ammo” Williams (14-0, 10 KOs), 27, a southpaw from Houston, will face veteran Steve Rolls (22-2, 12 KOs), 39, of Toronto, whose only losses came by fourth-round knockout to Gennadiy Golovkin and 10-round decision to Edgar Berlanga.
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Canelo-Charlo officials appointed
The Nevada State Athletic Commission at its monthly meeting on Tuesday appointed referee Harvey Dock to officiate Canelo Alvarez’s undisputed super middleweight title defense against undisputed junior middleweight champion Jermell Charlo on Sept. 30 (Showtime PPV and PPV.com, 8 p.m. ET) at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
The fight will be Dock’s first Alvarez bout and fourth Charlo fight.
Dock, who has primarily worked in New York, now also works regularly in Nevada and become a go-to referee in Las Vegas. He was the third man in the ring for the Errol Spence Jr.-Terence Crawford undisputed welterweight title fight in July and the Devin-Vasiliy Lomachenko undisputed lightweight title fight in May.
Appointed to judge the bout: New Jersey’s Steve Weisfeld, Oklahoma’s David Sutherland and California’s Max De Luca.
Weisfeld will judge his seventh Alvarez fight. He has worked several of his biggest fights, including his previous three in Las Vegas (Gennadiy Golovkin III, Dmitry Bivol and Caleb Plant), Callum Smith and Daniel Jacobs. He also judged the Golovkin rematch and scored Alvarez’s disputed majority decision win for Alvarez. Weisfeld will work his third Charlo fight and had him losing his first fight with Brian Castano, which was ruled a split draw for the undisputed 154-pound crown.
Sutherland will be judging his fourth Alvarez fight and his fourth Charlo fight, and his second in a row as he also judged Charlo’s knockout of Castano in their rematch last year in which he became the undisputed junior middleweight champion.
De Luca will be judging his sixth Alvarez fight (all of which ended by knockout) and first Charlo fight.
The Nevada commission also assigned the officials to the other title bout on the card, the vacant WBC interim title fight between Yordenis Ugas and Mario Barrios. The referee will be California’s Thomas Taylor. Judging the bout will be Weisfeld, Nevada’s Tim Cheatham and Arizona’s Chris Flores.
Teraji retains unified title
Unified junior flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji retained the WBC/WBA belts via one-sided ninth-round knockout of former strawweight and unified junior flyweight titlist Hekkie Budler in the main event of a Teiken Promotions card on Monday at Ariake Arena in Tokyo.
Teraji (22-1, 14 KOs), 31, of Japan, stalked Budler (35-5, 11 KOs), 35, of South Africa, throughout the fight, which streamed on ESPN+ in the United States, and was way ahead on all three scorecards, 80-72, 79-73 and 79-73, going into the ninth. That is when he caught the fading Budler with a flurry of punches that sent him to the ropes. And as Teraji continued to fire punches, referee Guadalupe Garcia stepped in at 2 minutes, 19 seconds.
Teraji made the third defense of his dominating second title reign, including his second since knocking out then-unbeaten countryman Hiroto Kyoguchi in the seventh round to take the WBA title in the unification bout in November. Budler’s three-fight winning streak since losing the WBA title to Kyoguchi by 10th-round knockout in December 2018 ended.
Also on the card, WBO junior bantamweight titlist Junto Nakatani (26-0, 19 KOs), 25, a Japanese southpaw, made his first defense, dropping Argi Cortes (25-4-2, 10 KOs), 28, of Mexico, three times en route to a one-sided decision.
Nakatani, a former WBO flyweight titlist, won 119-106, 119-106 and 118-108 after sending Cortes to the mat in twice in the fifth round and again in the ninth.
Nakatani vacated the flyweight belt last year and in his second fight at junior bantamweight scored a titanic knockout of the year candidate against Andrew Moloney in the 12th round in May in Las Vegas to win the vacant 115-pound belt.
Badou Jack plans
WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman told Fight Freaks Unite that the organization has re-classified cruiserweight titlist Badou Jack as its “champion in recess” and approved him to challenge bridgerweight titlist Lukasz Rozanski (15-0, 14 KOs), 37, of Poland.
Jack (28-3-3, 17 KOs), 39, a Sweden native now fighting out of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, won the cruiserweight belt by 12th-round knockout of Ilunga Makabu in February on the Jake Paul-Tommy Fury undercard in Diriyah, Saudi Arabia.
Jack, who has also won world titles at super middleweight and light heavyweight, confirmed to Fight Freaks Unite that in his next fight he will move up to the 224-pound bridgerweight division, which is only recognized by the WBC, in an attempt to win a title in a fourth weight class. The Rozanski fight is not yet scheduled.
Rozanski became the second-ever bridgerweight titlist when he knocked out Alen Babic in the first round to win the vacant title in April.
The vacant WBC cruiserweight title will be filled by the winner of the bout between Armenia native Noel Mikaelian (26-2, 11 KOs), 32, who has won three in a row since a decision loss to Mairis Briedis in 2018, and Makabu (29-3, 25 KOs), 35, of Congo.
Promoter Don King announced that bout last week as the co-feature of the Adrien Broner-Chris Howard welterweight bout on Nov. 4 at Casino Miami Jai Alai in Miami, Florida.
After Jack fights Rozanski, he will have the option to remain at bridgerweight or return to cruiserweight and fight for the title.
Purse bids canceled
There were two IBF purse bids scheduled for Tuesday that were canceled.
The more notable one was the junior welterweight eliminator between former unified titlist Jose Ramirez (28-1, 18 KOs), 31, of Avenal, California, and Arnold Barboza (28-0, 10 KOs), 31, of Los Angeles, for the right to become Subriel Matias’ mandatory challenger.
Carl Moretti, the vice president of Top Rank, which promotes Ramirez and is the former promoter of free agent Barboza, told Fight Freaks Unite the purse bid was cancelled because “Barboza’s people requested it.” Rick Mirigian, who manages Ramirez and Barboza, has not returned multiple messages seeking an explanation.
A purse bid for a junior lightweight title eliminator between Eduardo Nunez (24-1, 24 KOs), 26, of Mexico, and Zelfa Barrett (29-2, 16 KOs), 30, of England, a fight meant to produce titleholder Joe Cordina’s next mandatory challenger, was also canceled.
According to the IBF, it was canceled because Barrett pulled out.
Quick hits
Boxxer on Tuesday made official that European junior welterweight champion Franck Petitjean (24-6-3, 6 KOs), 35, a southpaw from France, will make his first defense against the Boxxer-promoted rising star Adam Azim (9-0, 6 KOs), 21, of England, on Nov. 18 (Sky Sports in the U.K.) in Wolverhampton, England. Also on the card, Matteo Signani (32-6-3, 12 KOs), 44, of Italy, will make his fifth defense of the European middleweight title against Tyler Denny (17-2-3, 0 KOs), 32, a British southpaw, who is 5-0-1, in his last six bouts.
IBF/WBO women’s strawweight titlist Yokasta Valle (28-2, 9 KOs), 30, a Nicaragua native fighting out of Costa Rica, is planning a quick return. She defended her belts by lopsided decision — 100-90, 99-91 and 99-91 — over Maria Santizo on Saturday night at the Commerce Casino in Commerce, California, on the undercard of the Golden Boy card topped by lightweight contender William Zepeda’s one-sided sixth-round knockout of Mercito Gesta. After the fight, Valle said she would be back in action on Nov. 4 in Costa Rica. Golden Boy told Fight Freaks Unite it planned to work on the event but that there was no opponent or site yet.
Show and tell
After Floyd Mayweather knocked out Ricky Hatton to retain the welterweight championship, Mayweather retired. But 21 months later, he shocked nobody when he returned. He faced lineal and unified lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez, who moved up two divisions for the fight, in an HBO PPV event at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas that had been delayed for two months due a Mayweather rib injury. Memorably, this was the fight for which Marquez was shown on HBO’s “24/7” drinking his own urine as part of his training regimen. There was controversy because Mayweather opted to ignore the contract catch weight of 144 pounds. While Marquez weighed 142 pounds (then a career heavy), Mayweather was 146 and paid Marquez the contract penalty of $300,000 per pound over the contract weight, adding a cool $600,000 extra to Marquez’s purse.
On fight night, Mayweather looked like anything but a fighter coming out of a nearly two-year retirement. He was razor-sharp as he easily outclassed fellow Hall of Famer Marquez in the most lopsided loss of his career. Mayweather dropped Marquez in the second round and won handily, 120-107, 119-108 and 118-109. The fight, which I was ringside to cover, was on Sept. 19, 2009 — 14 years ago on Tuesday. Here is a Tecate sponsor poster from the fight. It is one of nine different posters produced for the event, all which I have in my collection.
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Photos: Hitchins: Matchroom Boxing; Charlo: Andrew Hemingway/Showtime; Teraji-Budler: Sumio Yamada; Jack: Skill Challenge Entertainment
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A couple of nice crossroads fights this Saturday. Both Zepeda and surprisingly Juggernaut Joyce badly need a victory to right their careers. Or else they'll both be facing questions about retirement. Neither is a spring chicken.