Notebook: Kambosos vows to KO Hughes in return from Haney losses
Teraji, Nakatani world title doubleheader details; Top Rank heavyweight tripleheader; Luis Alberto Lopez featherweight defense set; Quick hits; Show and tell
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Former unified lightweight champion George Kambosos Jr. is looking to put a lost 2022 behind him by taking it all out on Maxi Hughes.
“I’m going to make an emphatic statement,” Kambosos said after a recent training session. “I’m going to show that I’m back. I’m going to show that I’ve become a better fighter. I’m going to knock out Maxi Hughes.”
Kambosos and Hughes will square off in an IBF lightweight title eliminator in the main event of a Top Rank Boxing on ESPN card on Saturday (ESPN, ESPN Deportes, ESPN+, 10 p.m. ET) at FireLake Arena in Shawnee, Oklahoma.
The fight will be Kambosos’ first since extending his promotional deal with Lou DiBella and also signing a co-promotional deal with Top Rank. More notably, it will be Kambosos’ first action since he lost back-to-back lopsided decisions to Devin Haney in 2022.
The first was in a unification bout for the undisputed 135-pound crown 13 months ago followed by the immediate rematch he had the contractual right to in October. It turned out to be just a seven-month championship reign for Kambosos, who had upset unified champion Teofimo Lopez for the belts in November 2021 in a fight of the year contender.
Kambosos (20-2, 10 KOs), 30, left his family in their native Australia to train in the United States for this critical bout to his future.
“I’m away from any distractions and I’m sacrificing,” Kambosos said. “When I’m sacrificing, I always bring out this more relentless hunger out of me. I’m going home to a makeshift house that the team is living in, and we’re watching fights and studying fights. If we come up with something, we go into the backyard and start working on it. This is a 24/7 warzone. We’re sacrificing with hard work, and (Saturday), I’m back.
“Since the Devin Haney fights, I’ve gotten sharper. I’ve become a better boxer. I’m better on my feet. I’m better all around. I’ve been able to sit back and add more artillery to the game. I’ve been able to watch so much more footage from different fights. I’m a better fighter.”
Kambosos is not getting any sort of easy touch coming off the two losses to Haney. He faces a red-hot Hughes (26-5-2, 5 KOs), 33, a southpaw from England, who has won seven fights in a row, most recently a majority 12-round upset decision over former featherweight titlist Kid Galahad in September.
Still, despite his recent rough patch and Hughes’ sustained success, Kambosos believes he is up to the task.
“I know that Maxi Hughes is coming off a seven-fight win streak against guys that I’ve never really heard of. It’s OK,” Kambosos said. “Whatever he’s coming with, that’s no problem. I’m coming in with what I’m coming in with. Just look at my last three fights. Don’t worry about the wins and losses. Just look at the names. Even prior to that. Look at my last five fights.”
In the 10-round co-feature, lightweight Keyshawn Davis (8-0, 6 KOs), 24, the 2022 Fight Freaks Unite prospect of the year and 2020 U.S. Olympic silver medalist from Norfolk, Virginia, will take on Francesco Patera (28-3, 10 KOs), 30, the former European champion from Belgium.
Teraji, Nakatani defenses set
Unified junior flyweight champion Kenshiro Teraji will defend the WBC and WBA titles against former strawweight and unified junior flyweight titlist Hekkie Budler on Sept. 18 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo, Teiken Boxing announced at a news conference.
The card will stream on ESPN+ in the United States, sources with knowledge of the plans told Fight Freaks Unite.
The show will also include WBO junior bantamweight titlist Junto Nakatani defending against Argi Cortes and the second professional boxing match of junior featherweight Tenshin Nasukawa, the 42-0 Japanese kickboxing superstar.
Teraji (21-1, 13 KOs), 31, of Japan, will make the third defense of his second title reign. He regained the 108-pound belt when avenged his title loss to Masamichi Yabuki in March 2022. In his first defense he stopped countryman Hiroto Kyoguchi in the seventh round to unify titles in November and made his second defense by ninth round knockout of Anthony Olascuaga in April.
Budler (35-4, 11 KOs), 35, of South Africa, has won three fights in a row since losing the WBA title Kyoguchi by 10th-round knockout in 2018.
Nakatani (25-0, 19 KOs), 25, a Japanese southpaw, who will be making his first defense, vacated the WBO flyweight title and moved up in weight and won the vacant belt in that division by spectacular 12th-round knockout of Andrew Moloney on May 20 on the Devin Haney-Vasiliy Lomachenko undercard in Las Vegas.
Cortes (25-3-2, 10 KOs), 28, of Mexico, has won two fights in a row since he gave lineal champion Juan Francisco Estrada all he could handle in a tremendously competitive unanimous decision loss in September 2022.
Nasukawa (1-0, 1 KO), 24, will face Juan Flores (9-0, 7 KOs), 23, of Mexico, in an eight-rounder. Nasukawa turned pro with a six-round decision on Teraji’s last undercard in April. He is best known to boxing fans for being dropped three times and drilled in the first round of an exhibition bout against then-41-year-old and much bigger Floyd Mayweather in 2018.
Boxing King Media appearance
I joined my pals at Boxing King Media to discuss several topics, including Tyson Fury-Francis Ngannou, Errol Spence Jr.-Terence Crawford, Anthony Joshua, Deontay Wilder, Devin Haney’s options, Conor Benn and more. Check out the video here:
Heavyweight tripleheader
Heavyweight Efe Ajagba will face Zhan Kossobutskiy in a 10-rounder on Top Rank’s ESPN card on Aug. 26 (10:30 p.m. ET) at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a source with knowledge of the bout told Fight Freaks Unite, confirming a BoxingScene report.
The fight will be the co-feature to the previously announced Jared Anderson-Andriy Rudenko 10-round heavyweight main event.
Kossobutskiy, 34, a southpaw from Kazakhstan, was slated to fight Anderson on July 1 in Anderson’s Toledo, Ohio, homecoming but was replaced by former titlist Charles Martin on 11 days’ notice when Kossobutskiy (19-0, 18 KOs) was unable to get a visa in time to come to the United States.
Anderson outpointed Martin and there was the prospect that Anderson-Kossobutskiy would headline on Aug. 26 with his visa worked out. Instead, Kossobutskiy will face Ajagba (17-1, 13 KOs), 29, a 2016 Nigerian Olympian fighting out of Stafford, Texas.
In the eight-round opener, 2020 Olympic super heavyweight gold medalist Bakhodir Jalolov (12-0, 12 KOs), 28, a 6-foot-7, 250-pound southpaw from Uzbekistan, will face an opponent to be announced in his first fight since becoming a free agent and signing with Top Rank, which formally announced the signing and his placement on the card Wednesday, confirming a previous Fight Freaks Unite report.
“I am excited for this new chapter in my career and to present my boxing skills to boxing fans worldwide,” Jalolov said. “Top Rank is one of the elite boxing promoters, and I look forward to a prosperous relationship.”
Top Rank chairman Bob Arum added, “Bakhodir Jalolov is one of the finest heavyweight talents in boxing today. His tremendous amateur credentials speak for themselves, and as a professional, he has proven to be equally devastating. I truly believe he will be a heavyweight champion one day.”
Quick hits
Mexico’s Luis Alberto Lopez will make his second IBF featherweight title defense versus Joet Gonzalez on Sept. 15 (ESPN) — the night before Mexican Independence Day — at the American Bank Center in Corpus Christi, Texas, sources with knowledge of the fight told Fight Freaks Unite. Lopez was the mandatory challenger when he beat Josh Warrington by majority decision in his hometown of Leeds, England, in December. In his first defense, Lopez (28-2, 16 KOs), 29, knocked out Michael Conlan in the fifth round in May in his hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland. Los Angeles’ Gonzalez (26-3, 15 KOs), 29, is getting a third world title shot. He lost decisions for the WBO title to Shakur Stevenson in 2019 and Emanuel Navarrete in 2021.
Showtime announced it will stream two 10-round preliminary bouts July 29 (6 p.m. ET) from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on the Showtime Sports YouTube channel and Showtime Boxing Facebook page before the start of the Errol Spence Jr.-Terence Crawford Showtime PPV event at 8 p.m. ET. The two bouts are super middleweight and Crawford pal Steven Nelson (18-0, 15 KOs), 35, of Omaha, Nebraska, against Rowdy Montgomery (10-4-1, 7 KOs), 37, of Victorville, California, and junior featherweight Jose Salas Reyes (12-0, 9 KOs), 21, of Mexico, against former title challenger Aston Palicte (28-5-1, 23 KOs), 32, of the Philippines.
The Wasserman Boxing card headlined by the 12-round junior featherweight fight between Lee McGregor (12-0-1, 9 KOs), 26, and Erik Robles (13-1, 9 KOs), 23, of Mexico, will stream around the world Friday on DAZN (except in the U.K. and Ireland) from Meadowbank Sports Centre in McGregor’s hometown of Edinburgh, Scotland, the promoter and broadcaster announced. Wasserman Boxing and DAZN have been doing more and more business together.
The long-running Southern California club show series put on by Thompson Boxing Promotions, which suffered the death of founder Ken Thompson at age 85 in February, will cease operations following its Friday night at the Doubletree Hotel in Ontario, where it has put on most of its shows during its 23-year existence. Welterweight Louie Lopez (13-2-1, 4 KOs), 26, of Corona, California, who headlines versus Benjamin Lamptey (13-11-0, 2 KOs), 35, of Ghana, in an eight-rounder, weighed in on the end of the series. “It’s going to be a very emotional day for everyone fighting on the card, me included,” said Lopez, a regular throughout his career on Thompson cards. “The Thompson Boxing family has been close to all of us who have been fighting on their shows. I want to thank everyone at Thompson Boxing for giving me the opportunity to follow my dreams. I will have a lot of family and friends in attendance and I’m going to leave everything in the ring.”
Show and tell
After Vernon Forrest dropped and beat up then-pound-for-pound king and amateur rival Shane Mosley to take his welterweight world title by lopsided decision in a shocker, Mosley invoked his contractual right to an immediate rematch hoping to avenge his first career defeat and regain his P4P status and title. Almost six months later to the day they met again in the main event of a highly significant HBO card at Conseco Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, where I was ringside to cover what was one of the featured events of the annual Indiana Black Expo.
Forrest didn’t beat up Mosley this time but he once again soundly outboxed him, using his long jab to negate Mosley’s speed advantage to retain the title via scores of 117-111, 116-112 and 115-113 before 15,775, the largest crowd for a boxing event in Indiana history. Forrest moved to 3-0 against Mosley with two huge pro wins and a victory in their much discussed amateur bout in the semifinals of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials. The pro rematch was on July 20, 2002 — 21 years ago on Thursday. Here is a scarce site poster in my collection.
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Photos: Kambosos: Mikey Williams/Top Rank; Teraji: Naoki Fukuda; Lopez: Conlan Boxing
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