Why Tapales vs Akhmadaliev Promises Fireworks This Saturday

When Marlon Tapales (36-3) out of The Philippines, and Murodjon Akhmadaliev (11-0) out of Uzbekistan meet atop a deep card in the Boeing Center at Tech Port at San Antonio this Saturday, boxing will be treated to the kind of fight that has been delivering consistent excellence in the first part of 2023.

In Luis Nery versus Azat Hovhannisyan, Brandon Figueroa versus Mark Magsayo and Artem Dalakian versus David Jiminez, we got solid, exciting, competitive and often vicious fights where the fistic public didn’t have to be plugged into social media to follow fight negotiations because the negotiations were carried out in private, as is right and proper. Boxing fans did not have to dig through a series of profane-laden videos straight to camera to try to decipher clues as to the state of negotiations between the two millionaire alpha male superstars and their huge teams of accountants, lawyers and agents but could, instead, trust that the two men would turn up and fight it out at the time stated in the TV guide.

January through March, just under or just over the radar depending upon the weight class, boxing has been delivering good to great fights at a high rate across the continents for one of the best beginnings to the year in my time as a fan. Tapales-Akhmadaliev is the latest of these.

Most importantly in trying to pick these jewels out ahead of time is the relative rankings of the two fighters in question. All the examples in paragraph two were fights contested between fighters who were closely ranked in any decent appraisal of their given division. The importance of this cannot be overstated, and the phrase “decent appraisal” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. You can’t trust the ABCs, for example. The WBA are usually the worst offenders in this regard, and as an example their heavyweight rankings would promise a scintillating contest between their number four, a man named Lenier Peno and their number eight, Jonathan Guidry – honest professionals, I’m sure, but minor players to put it politely.

Tapales and Akhmadaliev can be found ranked near the top of the pack in both print and digital media and in specialist independent ratings organisations such as TBRB who rank Akhmadaliev as the number two 122lb contender in the world, and Tapales, the number six (for the record I have them at 3 and 5 respectively). This is not a guarantee of competitiveness – ranked fighters stumble past their primes and achieve underserved spots based upon careful matchmaking all the time, that’s boxing – but it is close.

Akhmadaliev’s rise to 122lb eminence has been swift and violent. After a five-year amateur career which included some impressive moments, he turned professional strapped to a rocket more commonly associated with Olympic gold medal winners. He was first scheduled to fight over ten in just his fourth fight although nobody was able to carry him that far as he strung together knockouts to carry him into the 2020s and his first fight over the twelve-round distance.

His opponent was to be Daniel Roman, highly ranked, big, fast, and much more experienced. It is this fight that confirmed Akhmadaliev as special. His bulldog frame belied his grace and quickness in getting his punches into range – his sizzling inverted one-two was more impressive than Roman’s jab/uppercut combination. He outfought Roman in the first half and even more impressively out-lasted and out-monstered him down the stretch, sweeping eight through eleven on my card to pick up an inexplicably close decision on the official scorecards.

This was a big moment for Akhmadaliev who had never boxed more than nine rounds in his career but was clearly ready to do a difficult twelve and throw enough punches to win late rounds. Engine checked and in possession of two belts, he blasted out an overmatched Ryosuke Iwasa in his ninth fight – an important match we shall return to – before all but shutting out Jose Velasquez in twelve rounds in his tenth.

His most recent fight was a twelve-round knockout of Ronny Rios and there was a feeling watching this fight unfold that Rios was summitting. Azat Hovhannisyan got Rios out of there more quickly, but the systemic breakdown Akhmadaliev put forth was in many ways more impressive. His southpaw jab triggered three and four punch combinations, his footwork brought Rios on before taking Akhmadaliev out of harm’s way; he threw an uppercut through the middle and he hurt Rios to the body as early as the fourth, also the round in which he took near complete control over the fight, losing only one more round on my card. Mixing counterpunches with leads, if a fighter can do it competently, makes the fighting environment as hostile for the opponent as any boxing execution other than perhaps a barracked pressure-stalk.  Akhmadaliev showed both and that he understood the detail of both against Rios.

He also proved he carries power late. The single power punches he elected to deploy when he had Rios hurt in the twelfth and final round were chilling, the crippling body shot to the solar plexus he used to break Rios a thing of horror.  Akhmadaliev loaded up only at the very end when things were essentially already decided, though it might be noted that he started missing when he did.

Tapales will also have noted though that Akhmadaliev was there throughout for an uppercut to the body and might perhaps offer a thought on Ronny’s reluctance to throw the punch he had success with, such was his fear of Akhmadaliev’s counter left. Tapales had a more circumspect rise to the top, turning professional as a teenager and suffering excusable setbacks as he moved through the distances and into new classes. These “setbacks” must have seemed easy to him compared to life’s alternative; Tapales, one of eight children, worked on a pig-farm even before he was a fifteen-year-old professional.

Either way, post 2014, Tapales seemed to have found the formula to cohabiting learning and winning. He went 12-0 between then and his 2019 contest with Ryosuke Iwasa. We ran into Iwasa above when he succumbed to Akhmadaliev in five. Iwasa, for whatever reason, just did not have the hands to keep Akhmadaliev honest or off him. Akhmadaliev cruised into him in the second and dispatched him in the fifth, uppercuts doing the damage before many straight punches in tandem prompted a slightly premature intervention by the referee.

Tapales meanwhile, lost to Iwasa, his last loss, posted right at the end of the last decade, but there were circumstances. Tapales, who won the first two rounds clearly, incorrectly had a headbutt ruled as a knockdown in the third – worse, his right eye suffered serious damage in the clash and left him hampered. He won perhaps as few as two rounds in the remainder of the fight before succumbing in the eleventh, mainly to the Iwasa left, which he may have struggled to see coming.

Interpreting this fight may be key to understanding how Saturday night will unfold, but I don’t think so. Tapales may have learned his final lesson that night, and since then he has been ruthless in deploying his offence and controlling the fight rhythms. Indeed, he has actually become a victim of his own success, a new problem being inactivity – Tapales staged his comeback fight against the limited Eden Sonsona who he blasted out in two; he then moved back to the sharper end of the division against Hiroaki Teshigawara, who he also knocked out in two; another soft touch in Jose Estrella resulted in another KO2 and Tapales had managed to post just six rounds for the decade.

But he has clearly found the third punch in his combinations and has never looked a better, more complete fighter. Whatever the detail of his contest against Iwasa, Tapales is better now. Nevertheless, Akhmadaliev will start as the favourite as the higher ranked man, the beltholder, based upon the Iwasa result and finally that propensity for targeted body punching. It does all add up to Akhmadaliev being the right pick in a possible thriller that I’ll look to see finished by body punching perhaps late in the fight. Tapales will look to take control early while Akhmadaliev is appraising him, but the jab coming the other way plus the shots Akhmadaliev builds off it will prove to be just a little too much. The stakes are high. The winner is positioned to joust with Luis Nery in determining the next opponent for the victor of the Naoya Inoue-Stephen Fulton fight later this year.

Sharing top billing on this card, Jesse Rodriguez seeks to pick up a 112lb strap against the overmatched Cristian Gonzalez Hernandez. This will probably feel like something of a procession but with Hernandez on a short streak of quick knockouts, we may be treated to early fireworks.

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