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Three Punch Combo: Under The Radar Fights and Prospects to Watch

THREE PUNCH COMBO — In case anyone hasn’t noticed, this upcoming week is a very busy one in the sport. ESPN+, Showtime, Fox Sports 1 and DAZN all have cards on the docket. Of course, when this occurs, some very good fights can fall under the radar.
On Saturday, Fox Sports 1 will televise a show from Minneapolis, MN that will be headlined by a crucial crossroads fight in the 168-pound division between Caleb Truax (30-4-2, 19 KO’s) and Peter Quillin (34-1-1, 23 KO’s). In my opinion, this sets up to be the most competitive fight of the week.
Ironically, if this fight had been put together just two years ago it would have been viewed as a total mismatch. Quillin, a former middleweight champion blessed with natural athletic abilities, would have been a sizable favorite and many would not have been happy to see such a fight headlining a nationally televised card.
But a lot has changed in two years. Most notably, Truax pulled a major upset in December of 2017 against James DeGale to win a world title. On that night, Truax lifted his game to a different level. Though he lost the rematch to DeGale, Truax was still competitive and fighting with a new sense of confidence in his career.
Quillin, on the other hand, has seen his once-promising career head into an entirely different direction. Though he has won two in a row since his only loss to Daniel Jacobs in December of 2015, Quillin has looked less than impressive in those outings.
While Truax seems to be fighting with confidence, Quillin seems tentative and unsure of himself inside the ring. In those two recent performances, he seemed hesitant to let his hands go despite the openings that were present, fighting very cautiously and doing just enough to win.
When breaking this fight down, almost all the boxes are checked in Quillin’s favor. He is certainly more athletic and quicker than Truax. Quillin will also have a major hand speed advantage and is the harder puncher. Defensively, Quillin is slicker with better head movement.
But Quillin’s recent lack of confidence compared with Truax’s new found belief in himself offsets all the tangible advantages for Quillin.
This version of Truax will keep coming and pressing the attack. With the level of confidence he has in his game, there will be little that Quillin can do to dissuade Truax from applying nonstop pressure.
Can Quillin’s natural abilities overcome his apparent lack of confidence that he has shown in his most recent outings? It is a big question and what makes this fight so intriguing. If Quillin does stand his ground and lets his hands go as he is capable, this could turn into a shootout. With so many directions this fight could turn, it is easily the one I am most looking forward to witnessing this upcoming weekend.
Another Under The Radar Fight
Also on the Fox Sports 1 card in Minneapolis on Saturday, Sergiy Derevyanchenko (12-1, 10 KO’s) takes on Jack Culcay (25-3, 13 KO’s) in a middleweight crossroads fight. Due to the numerous other fights taking place this week, this bout is receiving almost no attention but it is definitely worth a look.
Derevyanchenko is coming off a tight split decision loss to Daniel Jacobs in October for a middleweight title belt. Known as “The Technician”, Derevyanchenko is a well-schooled technically sound pro and a very sharp accurate puncher. His best trait is the ability to set up precise angles to land clean hard punches with maximum effectiveness.
Two years ago, Culcay gave then 154-pound champion Demetrius Andrade a very tough fight in losing a split decision. Now on a three fight winning streak since moving up to middleweight, Culcay is looking to get into the title picture with a win against Derevyanchenko.
Culcay is a pressure fighter by trade. He may not be a big puncher but at his best he is high volume puncher who looks to outwork his opposition. Against Andrade, Culcay showed an ability to navigate range against a more athletic fighter and get work done on the inside.
One thing that neither fighter does well is move his head. Thus, they both can be easy to hit. As such, I think at the very least we are going to get a fan friendly fight.
I love this matchup of styles. Culcay will press forward aggressively throwing punches. This should give the sharp punching Derevyanchenko plenty of opportunities to counter. But Culcay for his part should be able to land quite a bit due to Derevyanchenko’s severe lack of head movement.
How will Culcay take Derevyanchenko’s power? And how will Derevyanchenko handle Culcay’s relentless pressure? This is a very intriguing fight and another that I am very much looking forward to watching this coming weekend.
More Prospects
This past Friday, ESPN+ broadcast a show from Dubai headlined by a match between 115-pound contender Aliu Bamidele Lasisi (13-0, 8 KO’s) and Ricardo Blandon (10-2, 6 KO’s). While this was a solid main event (Lasisi won a 12-round unanimous decision), it was two blue chip prospects that stole the show.
Lightweight prospect Sultan Zaurbek (6-0, 4 KO’s) scored a scintillating one punch knockout of Chenghong Tao (7-6-1, 5 KO’s) in the fifth round of their scheduled six round fight. In this performance, the 22-year-old Zaurbek showed why many boxing insiders consider him to be an elite prospect.
Zaurbek, who hails from Kazakhstan, had an extensive amateur career that included a win in the unpaid ranks against 2016 Olympic gold medalist Robson Conceicao. This deep amateur experience has put him on the fast track in the pro game.
Zaurbek, a southpaw, possesses very fast hands and excellent footwork. He is a sharp accurate puncher and very adept at this early stage in his career at using footwork to set up just the right angles to land clean punches. And he possesses big time power in both hands. Against Tao, Zaurbek showed all these skillsets before closing the show with a vicious right hook that landed with precision and maximum power.
Also on the card, highly touted 122-pound prospect Shakhobidin Zoirov (1-0, 1 KO) made a quick and successful professional debut, knocking out Anthony Holt (5-5-1, 3 KO’s) in under a minute of the first round.
Zoirov, a gold medalist at flyweight in the 2016 Olympics, also has a deep amateur pedigree. Hailing from Uzbekistan, the 26-year-old Zoirov seems to have all the makings of a future star.
Zoirov can best be described as an aggressive southpaw. Like Zaurbek, he possesses very fast hands and excellent footwork. And as evidenced by his quick destruction of Holt, Zoirov also has legitimate one punch power.
Another element of Zoirov’s game that jumps out is his defense. For an aggressive fighter, he is pretty slick due to his excellent footwork and he moves his head very well when on the attack. And his defense is only going to get better as he continues to refine his technique.
It is easy to why so many in boxing are so high on Sultan Zaurbek and Shakhobidin Zoirov. Both young fighters appear to have all the tools required to one day reach the pinnacle.
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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