The Monday LunchBox

It was a relatively quiet weekend of boxing after recent weeks.

The highlight was American lightweight Devin Haney convincingly outpointing 2004 Olympic champion Yuriorkis Gamboa to retain his WBC world title for a second time. Again the mind boggles when Brooklyn’s Teofimo Lopez is recognised as the 9st 9lb (135lbs) king by virtue of his victory over Vasilily Lomachenko last month and was pictured brandishing the WBC belt post fight.

Haney (25-0, 15 KO’s) is recognised as their official champion by virtue of being ‘interim’ champion and subsequently upgraded prior to the Lomachenko-Lopez match. To the casual sports fan with a passing interest in the sport this is baffling and unfortunately symptomatic of modern boxing and multiple sanctioning bodies.

However, this shouldn’t detract from Haney’s shut out performance against the veteran Cuban ex-world featherweight champion. Unanimously wide scores of 120-107 on two cards and 118-109 on the third told the story. A potential ‘unification’ fight between Lopez and Haney would be mouthwatering as various barbs have been exchanged on social media in recent months. It’s likely the wider recognised champ Lopez at this stage has bigger fish to fry though.

Other than snippets of heavyweight news; with Russian big man Alexander Povetkin testing positive and being hospitalised for COVID-19 and therefore a delay in the rematch with Londoner Dillian Whyte and, an opponent to be named for Tyson Fury for his December 5th date in London it was a quiet week.

The key event this week will be the build up to the Terence Crawford versus Kell Brook contest in the MGM Grand ‘Bubble’ in Las Vegas this weekend. This is really an elite match-up between the American Crawford, The Ring magazine #3 pound-for-pound fighter in the world and, the former IBF world champion at 10st 7lbs (147lbs) in Brook.

Crawford (36-0, 27 KO’s) defends his WBO world welterweight title against the British contender Brook (39-2, 27 KO’s) and will be shown on ESPN in the US.

On the UK domestic front the pick of the week will be build up to women’s multi-world champion Katie Taylor contest against Miriam Gutierrez which will be shown live on Sky Sports and DAZN in the US. Look in the Friday Faceup for previews of these fights.