Important Fights in Europe Emboss Saturday’s Boxing Menu

Vasiliy Lomachenko returns to the ring on Saturday on ESPN from the Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden. That’s the marquee event on this weekend’s docket, but several shows in Europe command our attention.

In Sheffield, England, hometown favorite Kell Brook (37-2, 26 KOs) takes on Michael Zerafa (25-2, 14 KOs) in a welterweight bout scheduled for 12 rounds. Brook, who was undefeated in his first 12 years as a pro, will be making his second start since back-to-back defeats to Gennady Golovkin and Errol Spence Jr.

Brook (pictured) had his moments in both of those fights, but was badly damaged. In the Golovkin fight, an ill-advised move to middleweight, he suffered a broken right eye socket in the second round. He tried to tough it out, but lasted only into the fifth before his corner tossed in the towel. Against Errol Spence, he suffered a broken socket in his other eye. That caused double vision and enabled Spence to come in late in a fight that was stopped in the 11th round. Brook vs. Spence drew a crowd of 27,000, an indication of Brook’s popularity in the UK.

Zerafa, a 26-year-old Australian, has won eight straight since suffering a fifth round stoppage at the hands of Peter Quillin at the Foxwoods resort in Connecticut.

In recent months Brook has been calling out countryman Amir Khan and it has long been rumored that this match is imminent.

The co-feature finds Dublin’s Jono Carroll (16-0, 3 KOs) stepping up in class to meet 35-year-old Frenchman Guillaume Frenois (46-1, 12 KOs) in a battle of southpaws in the 130-pound division. Also, fast-rising welterweight Josh Kelly (8-0, 6 KOs) faces his toughest test to date in the form of former world title challenger David Avanesyan (23-3-1, 11 KOs). The bouts will air on Sky Sports in the U.K. and on the live-streaming platform DAZN in Northern America and other parts of the world.

FRANCE

Over in France in the blue-collar Paris suburb of Lavallois-Perret, Michel Soro, a French citizen born in the Ivory Coast, takes on Melrose, Massachusetts invader Greg Vendetti. The bout is slated for 12 rounds with an “interim” WBA 154-pound title at stake.

Ranked #1 by the WBA, Soro (32-2-1, 21 KOs) suffered his first loss six-and-a-half years ago to a tough Ukrainian in the Ukraine, and his second to undefeated Brian Castano who currently holds a version of the world junior middleweight title. Soro started slowly against Castano and it cost him. He lost a split decision.

Vendetti (20-2-1, 12 KOs) had fought almost exclusively in and around Boston before venturing across the country to Indio, California, to oppose Yoshihiro Kamegai. The Japanese was somewhat shopworn, but he had knocked out rugged Jesus Soto Karass and went 12 with Miguel Cotto in his most recent fights and was expected to turn away Vendetti with little difficulty. The New England circuit, where Vendetti honed his craft, was no longer cranking out many world class fighters.

Vendetti upset the odds, using constant pressure to wear out Kamegai en route to winning a unanimous decision. That earned him this trip to France where he will go to post an even larger underdog.

ALSO

Moving farther east, all the way to Croatia, hot heavyweight prospect Filip Hrgovic (6-0, 5 KOs) meets Ecuador’s Ytalo Perea Castillo (11-3-2, 7 KOs) in a bout slated for 12 rounds. The six-foot-six Hrgovic will have a six-inch height advantage.

Castillo has never been stopped but the guess is that this fight will be over in a hurry. In his last outing, against ancient but rugged Amir Mansour, Hrgovic reminded the Scottish boxing maven Matt McGrain of a young Vitali Klitschko.

UPDATE: Within hours after this story was posted, it was announced that Castillo was off the card. He reportedly missed his connecting flight and it was suggested that he lacked the proper documentation for international travel. Kevin Johnson was summoned to fill the breach. Johnson reportedly had a 6-round fight in Germany this past Saturday, Dec. 1, but there’s no mention of it in BoxRec.

The 39-year-old Johnson (32-11-1) has a lot of big names on his resume (e.g. Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury). What he doesn’t have is wins over those big names. He’s lost eight of his last 11 documented fights including the last three. To his credit, however, he’s only been stopped twice.

Check out more boxing news on video at The Boxing Channel

To comment on this article at The Fight Forum, CLICK HERE