Category: Boxing

British lightweight contender Kevin Mitchell (39-2, 29 KOs) will challenge Jorge Linares (38-3, 25 KOs) for the WBC lightweight title, while Lee Selby (20-1, 8 KOs) takes on undefeated Russian Evgveny Gradovich (19-0-1, 9 KOs) for the IBF featherweight belt on May 30 at the O2 Arena in London.
“This is a huge night for British boxing and today’s announcement is just the beginning,” said promoter Eddie Hearn.
I’m delighted to deliver shots for Kevin and Lee in the UK and they have every chance…

WBC flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez (42-0, 36 KOs) defends his title against Mexican veteran Edgar Sosa (51-8, 30 KOs) on the undercard of the Gennady Golovkin-Willie Monroe Jr. middleweight world title bout on May 16 at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
Nicaraguan Gonzalez, a former strawweight and light flyweight world champion, will make the second defence of his title against Sosa, who held the WBC light flyweight title from 2007 to 2009 and made 10 defences.
Sosa, 35, has won two…

Australian boxer Brayd Smith has died in hospital two days after a points defeat to John Vincent Moralde of the Philippines, at Rumours International, Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia.
The 23-year-old congratulated Moralde in the ring, and was able to talk to friends at ringside after the 10-round featherweight bout before returning to his dressing room. But he later collapsed and was taken to hospital in Brisbane, where he spent two days in a medically induced coma on life support, and family…

IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) stopped former WBC titlist Jean Pascal (29-3-1, 17 KOs) in the 8th round on Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Kovalev was given the toughest fight of his professional career while he dropped Pascal, who had never previously been knocked down in his career, in the third and then stopped him in the eighth as he retained his three 175-pound world title belts.
Both came out firing hard shots a couple of…

IBO/WBA and interim WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs) will face slick southpaw Willie Monroe Jr. (19-1, 6 KOs) on May 16 at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
Golovkin defeated Martin Murray by an 11th round knockout in February in his last outing.
The Kazakh fighter has now knocked out 19 opponents in a row and is still in a situation where none of the other top 160 pound fighters want to face him.
It appears WBC champion Miguel Cotto is in no rush to fight him, and…

Floyd Mayweather Jr. (47-0, 26 KOs) and Manny Pacquiao (57-5-2, 38 KOs) appeared in front of the world’s media at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, in their only joint public appearance before the week of their May 2 mega-fight, billed as “Fight of the Century”.
The two best fighters and biggest names in the sport stood face-to-face, in a scene that many fans thought they would never see, alone on a stage to finally announce the big fight.
Due to disagreements between the two boxers’ camps on…

Julio Cesar Chavez Jr (48-1-1, 32 KOs) will fight light heavyweight contender Andrzej Fonfara (26-3, 15 KOs) on April 18 at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
The Mexican will return to the ring from a 13-month layoff at a catch-weight of 172 pounds against Fonfara, having fought only twice in two years, both points wins against Bryan Vera, including a highly controversial decision in their first fight.
After the Vera rematch, Chavez parted from career-long promoter Top Rank, whose CEO…

WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman (25-0, 21 KOs) impressed in beating Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (32-3-1, 18 KOs) by a unanimous decision on Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Thurman took the fight to Guerrero, dropping him in the 9th round and winning easily by scores of 120-107, 118-109 and 118-108.
Thurman came out very aggressively but Guerrero was not afraid to trade punches. A head clash in the third round left Thurman with a swelling on the left side of his…

IBF flyweight champion Amnat Ruenroeng (15-0, 5 KOs) defeated previously unbeaten two-time Olympic gold medalist Zou Shiming (6-1, 1 KOs) by a unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort in Macao, China.
With the capacity crowd behind him, Zou challenged a man he had already beaten twice as a amateur, but the Chinese boxer ultimately came up short in his first world title fight as a professional.
Zou and Amnat met for the fourth time in their careers, with Zou…

IBF super flyweight champion Zolani Tete (20-3, 17 KOs) scored a spectacular eighth-round knockout over Britain’s Paul Butler (17-1, 8 KOs) on Friday night at the Echo Arena in Liverpool.
South African Tete dominated the action before finishing Butler with a crushing left uppercut midway through the eighth round.
From the start, southpaw Tete kept Butler on the end of his jab while landing left hands to head and body.
On the occasion Butler did close the gap, he was tied up, spun around, and…