Unbeaten highly super middleweight contender Christian Mbilli weighed in at 166.8 lbs, while his opponent Mark Heffron weighed 167.3 pounds at Friday’s weigh-in for their 12-round contest this Saturday night at the Shawinigan’s Centre Gervais Auto in Canada.
(Photo credit: Eye of the Tiger)
Ranked #2 WBA, #2 WBC, #3 IBF, and #4 WBO at super middleweight, Mbilli (26-0, 22 KOs) will defend his WBC Continental Americas and WBA International belts against Heffron (30-3-1, 24 KO’s).
Heffron, 32, will have to figure out how to deal with Mbilli’s high punch output because he has not shown the kind of ability that suggests he can win this fight. Last year, Jack Cullen stopped Heffron in three rounds.
Mbilli’s World Title Aspirations
The 2016 Olympian Mbilli is poised to soon challenge for a world title against undisputed super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez if he chooses to face him. With Canelo, it’s hard to say for sure if he’ll agree to fight Mbilli or not because he could choose to put him in the deep freeze and ignore him.
Mbilli, 29, has looked impressive in recent fights. He stopped Rohan Murdock and Demond Nicholson and showed off his high punch output. Before that, Mbilli defeated the always-tough Carlos Góngora by a one-sided 12-round unanimous decision in March of last year.
One thing that separates Mbilli from many of the top fighters in the 168-lb division is his activity. He stays active, fighting twice a year, and that helps him be more visible than his competition.
Makhmudov’s Comeback
Heavyweight Arslanbek Makhmudov (18-1, 17 KOs) weighed in at 263.8 lbs, while his opponent Miljan Rovcanin (27-3, 18 KOs) came in at 236.2 lbs for their ten-round fight on Saturday night.
The Russian native Makhmudov, 34, is coming off an upset fourth-round knockout loss to Agit Kabayel on December 23rd last year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The body punching that Kabayel did proved to be too much for Makhmudov, who folded quickly from the shots.
That was a surprise because going into that fight; many felt that Makhmudov would be too much for Kabayel, as he’d been destroying everyone leading up to that contest. However, he’d never fought anyone who focused on body punching the way that Kabayel did, and it was too much for him.
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