Title Fights on ESPN and FOX Burnish the Labor Day Weekend Boxing Menu

Title Fights on ESPN and FOX Burnish the Labor Day Weekend Boxing Menu

Top Rank is back at the MGM Grand “Bubble” on Saturday with an eight-bout card. The featured fights will be streamed live on subscription channel ESPN+ at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT.

The main event is the twice-postponed WBO super featherweight title fight between Jamel Herring (21-2, 10 KOs) and Jonathan Oquendo (31-6, 19 KOs). Herring (pictured) is making the second defense of the title he won from Masayuki Ito. This is likely the last big opportunity for Puerto Rico’s Oquendo, 37, a former world title challenger.

Bob Arum has always been drawn to a fighter with a good back story and Herring, an ex-Marine and 2012 U.S. OIympian, sure has a good one. “Went to war overseas, lost a child, suffered from PTSD, clinical depression, and a parent of autistic children. My opponent across the ring is the least of my worries,” he wrote on his twitter page in June of last year.

The inspirational Herring, 34, has overcome more adversity since he wrote those words, overcoming COVID-19. A win over Oquendo will earn him a November date with Northern Ireland’s Carl Frampton, a bout that would have wide international appeal, even if forced into a bubble.

Herring has been training in Omaha under Brian “BoMac” MacIntyre. Best known as the trainer of Terence Crawford, MacIntyre has expanded his range, opening his gym to Herring, Rob Brant, Maurice Hooker, and Steven Nelson, among others. Nelson, who is moving down in weight, will appear in Saturday’s co-feature, meeting DeAndre Ware in a super middleweight contest slated for 10 rounds.

An Omaha native, the 32-year-old Nelson (16-0, 13 KOs) has fought most of his career as a light heavyweight. He’s coming off a career-best performance, an eighth-round stoppage of previously undefeated Cem Kilic. Ware, a 32-year-old Toledo firefighter, is making his first start in almost 13 months. He brings a 13-2-2 (8) record.

The card will also include fast-rising heavyweight Jared Anderson who is facing his sternest test to date in the form of Rodney Hernandez.

Anderson, who would have been favored to medal had he stuck around for the Olympics, has won all five of his pro fights by stoppage. As a pro, the 20-year-old Toledo native has answered the bell for only seven rounds, but multiple sparring sessions with Tyson Fury have accelerated his progress.

The 31-year-old Hernandez, from Modesto, California, brings a 13-9-2 record. He’s gone the distance with the likes of Adam Kownacki, Michael Hunter, and Sergey Kuzman. Recent Top Rank signee Efe Ajagba, currently 13-0, is one of only two men to stop Hernandez. Ajagba halted him in the fifth round.

The fight against Hernandez will provide a good measuring rod for Anderson as to where he stands relative to Ajagba. They are potential opponents (potentially the U.S. version of Dubois vs. Joyce).

Sunday

Sunday’s Card at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles airs on FOX at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. In the main go, Yordenis Ugas (25-4, 12 KOs) meets Abel Ramos (26-3-2, 20 KOs) for the vacant WBA (regular) world welterweight title.

This is the third fight back for Ugas, 34, since losing a split decision to Shawn Porter in a bid for Porter’s WBC belt. That’s Ugas’s only loss in his last 11 starts.

A bronze medalist for Cuba at the 2008 OIympics, Ugas’s pro career hit a brick wall in 2014 with back-to-back losses to rising prospects Emanuel Robles and Amir Imam. Out of action for 28 months, he hooked up with legendary trainer Ismael Salas and things have gone splendidly since then aside from the bitter loss to Porter, a fight that many folks thought should have gone his way.

Abel Ramos, who fights out of Casa Grande, Arizona, was involved in one of the most bizarre fights of this year when he stopped Bryant Perrella on the undercard of the Plant-Feigenbutz fight at Nashville on Feb. 15. Heading into the final round of the 10-round contest, Ramos was so far behind on the cards that he needed a knockout to win. He rose to the challenge, throwing the kitchen sink at Perrella and — reminiscent of the famous first fight between Julio Cesar Chavez and Meldrick Taylor — beat the clock by the slimmest possible margin.

That was Ramos’s eighth straight win. The defeats on his ledger – to Regis Prograis, Ivan Baranchyk, and Jamal James – came against fighters who were collectively 52-1 when he fought them.

Two of PBC’s most promising prospects are in supporting bouts on the main FOX channel. Jesus Alejandro Ramos, the 19-year-old nephew of Abel Ramos, meets Esteban Garcia in a battle of unbeaten welterweights. Ramos (12-0, 11 KOs) has fought extensively in Mexico and Garcia (14-0, 6 KO) has fought exclusively in Mexico although he hails from the Central California cow town of Brawley.

Omar Juarez (8-0, 4 KOs) meets Dakota Linger (12-3-2, 8 KOs) in a junior welterweight match slated for eight rounds. Juarez hails from Brownsville, Texas; Linger from West Virginia. In recent years, West Virginia has produced as many good boxers as Nova Scotia has churned out good shortstops.

Check out more boxing news on video at the Boxing Channel 

To comment on this story in the Fight Forum CLICK HERE