We’ve got a lot of big names back in action this weekend over three nights, but what are the actual best fights?
Boxing has a huge weekend set to kick off tomorrow night, with returns for Canelo Alvarez, Ryan Garcia, Naoya Inoue, Devin Haney, Teofimo Lopez, and more over three nights in New York, Riyadh, and Las Vegas.
But what are the actual best fights? Let’s forget who’s best at trash talk, who’s best at dancing during their media workout, who says the wildest things (Bill Haney’s not even fighting), and just look at the matchups as they could play out once the bell actually rings and this goes from salesmanship to an actual sport for a few minutes.
9. Badou Jack vs Norair Mikaeljan (Saturday, DAZN PPV)
The WBC cruiserweight title picture has been a mess for a while now, but at least this will kinda-sorta settle some things. The 41-year-old Jack (28-3-3, 17 KO) hasn’t fought since beating Junior Makabu for the title in February 2023, so we’re talking over two years out of the ring, and Jack — while good at the weight — is not a natural cruiserweight, either.
In the meantime, Mikaeljan (27-2, 12 KO) also beat Makabu for the again-vacant WBC belt in November 2023, and he also hasn’t fought since, as he was in the Don King vortex for a bit there. So the 34-year-old Armenian is also rusty, on paper.
Now, I think this could be a good fight. Jack’s one of those guys who just kept being in the mix going up divisions and hanging around as a player in multiple classes, winning belts, while Mikaeljan is a good fighter when he’s active, and both of his two losses were debatable, including one with Mairis Briedis, who at the time was the top cruiserweight in the sport. They’re both tough, they are genuine fighters, and last we knew of them, sincere contenders in the division.
But it’s been a while, and it’s hard to know exactly what we can expect of either man.
8. Canelo Alvarez vs William Scull (Saturday, DAZN PPV)
Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KO) is a massive favorite against Cuba’s Scull (23-0, 9 KO), and for good reason. Some of the hope for the Scull believers (well, Canelo haters, let’s be honest) is that Canelo has struggled in the past with high-end, “pure” boxers. But we’re talking about guys like Floyd Mayweather when Canelo was a pup, or Dmitry Bivol — genuinely elite guys. Even if you go past that, you’re talking about someone like Erislandy Lara, who was a terrific technician and a southpaw to boot. Other than those guys, you get into Gennadiy Golovkin and Miguel Cotto, who are Hall of Fame-bound.
Scull can box, but there has been nothing special captured on film yet for the 32-year-old “El Indomable,” including his most relevant win over Vladimir Shishkin to claim the IBF super middleweight title, which Canelo vacated last year instead of bothering with an order to fight him, as Canelo had a bigger money matchup with Edgar Berlanga on offer.
Scull is a better boxer than Berlanga, but Canelo, even in some decline, remains a terrific boxer at age 34, and based on the footage we have of Scull, it’s hard to see him producing some Bivol-like effort and derailing Canelo.
There’s just not a lot of intrigue in this one on paper. A Canelo win makes him “undisputed champion” at 168 again, which just doesn’t hold much appeal for me given how easily fighters tend to cast that off when they don’t feel like dealing with some mandatory order or other, and it sets up his September clash with Terence “Bud” Crawford.
7. Bruno Surace vs Jaime Munguia 2 (Saturday, DAZN PPV)
Bruno Surace scored the 2024 Upset of the Year when he beat Jaime Munguia on December 14, and now the 26-year-old Frenchman has to try and do it again, frankly because a lot of money has been invested into Munguia and Surace still has very little name value.
It wasn’t just the result that stunned everyone, but the fact that Surace (26-0-2, 5 KO) is no puncher, but he stopped Munguia in six, after being dropped in the second himself. It was a devastating outcome for Munguia (44-2, 35 KO), whom Top Rank signed away from Golden Boy, hoping they’d landed someone who could sell tickets and garner interest.
If Munguia loses again here, the 28-year-old will go into a total career reset mode. He won’t be finished, because he’s too young for that, but Munguia’s strengths and weaknesses are very clear at this point, he’s not going to make dramatic changes.
And that’s what holds me back a bit. Can Surace repeat what he did last time out? I think it’s unlikely, honestly, but even if he does, he’s not showing anything new. And with Munguia, the upside from here is really limited no matter what happens. He is a fun fighter to watch at his best, no question. This is an understandable fight to make, but I’m not much more excited about it going in this time than I was last time, because I feel like I’ve seen the most exciting thing this matchup can ever produce.
6. Ryan Garcia vs Rolly Romero (Friday, DAZN PPV)
Garcia (24-1, 20 KO) and Romero (16-2, 13 KO) have talked a great game. They have done their best to sell a pay-per-view. But, again, now the bell has to ring.
Ryan Garcia is a lot better than Rolly Romero. It’s really that simple.
Rolly’s only hope here is to come out swinging like a madman and hope he catches Garcia with something big. But even considering that, Rolly’s pop has not looked the same at 140 that it did at 135, and now he’s up at 147. Garcia has taken the same path, weight-wise, but Ryan’s a harder, sharper puncher, so much faster that it’s hard to put it into words, and just a better boxer in every way.
There could be some excitement here, and either way it goes I don’t think the fight will be boring. But Rolly got stopped by Pitbull Cruz and labored a bit last time out against Manuel Jaimes, a fighter worse than his paper record, and those came after he struggled and got a stoppage even he thought was crap against Ismael Barroso. Romero is not in Garcia’s league, unless Garcia goes out there and has the worst night of his life.
5. Devin Haney vs Jose Ramirez (Friday, DAZN PPV)
I’m really interested in this one from the Haney (31-0, 15 KO) side. Frankly, I don’t think there’s much gas left in the tank for Ramirez (29-2, 18 KO), who just has not looked inspired in the ring, but maybe the move up in weight will bolster him, we’ll see.
But for Haney — even if the loss to Ryan Garcia was overturned, and it was, he took a beating in that fight, not just physically but more importantly, mentally. He got rocked all over the ring, dropped three times, and there’s no way 100 percent of his mind can explain it all away with the weight or the failed drug test. “Exposed” gets thrown around a lot in boxing circles, but I think Garcia exposed some arrogance that had built in Haney.
At 26, Haney is absolutely young enough to bounce back from it as if it never happened, more or less. But it’s going to have required sincere work. Devin says that work has been put in, he’s got his mind right, and he sounds confident going into this fight. But if Ramirez tags him or makes him pay for some mistakes, will he falter? And while there’s no world title or anything on the line here, Haney is fighting to guarantee a rematch with Garcia, which is big money, so there is some pressure on his side, and far less on Ramirez.
I could have this as high as No. 2, but I also know that this has a strong chance of becoming a boring fight when all is said and done, if Haney gets his way and goes out there and shuts Ramirez down over 12 rounds.
4. Naoya Inoue vs Ramon Cardenas (Sunday, ESPN+ and ESPN)
This isn’t any closer a matchup in terms of expected competitiveness compared to what Canelo and Garcia have, and it’s probably not ideal that the three main events are all down here.
I give Inoue (29-0, 26 KO) a slight nod over the other two because Inoue is simply must-see TV, period, every time out. The way he boxes is so simple and so clean, but he’s just unbelievably effective. He makes few mistakes, and he punishes opponents for the ones they make.
Cardenas (26-1, 14 KO) is a good fighter taking his shot at greatness. Inoue is just a massive step up from the likes of Bryan Acosta. The anticipated Inoue win sets up a September clash with Murodjon Akhmadaliev, which could be Inoue’s goodbye to the 122 lb division, as he’ll have basically beaten everyone there is to beat at that point.
3. Rafael Espinoza vs Edward Vazquez (Sunday, ESPN+ and ESPN)
Think this one has some sleeper potential, but I’ll also say this could wind up being the bottom rung matchup of the weekend when all is said and done. This ranking is a gamble.
Vazquez (17-2, 4 KO) is not a guy to ignore. Both of his losses — to Raymond Ford and Joe Cordina — were highly competitive, a split decision and a majority decision. He is not a pushover. The Texan is a crafty, skilled guy who knows his way around the ring.
That said, he’s not a puncher, and he may struggle to keep Espinoza (26-0, 22 KO) honest. Espinoza, at 6’1” with a 74-inch reach, is a massive featherweight, bursting onto the scene in late 2023 by taking the WBO title from Robeisy Ramirez in impressive fashion, and he’s defended it twice, including a second win over Ramirez last December.
Espinoza is and should be the favorite. He’s probably the top featherweight in the sport right now. But if he looks past Vazquez toward something bigger, this could get interesting. Vazquez’s strengths and style are good for chipping away at opponents, keeping them from getting momentum, and even flustering them into fighting far worse than they should. If he can do that, this one could get very interesting.
2. Martin Bakole vs Efe Ajagba (Saturday, DAZN PPV)
These big fellas have talked and talked, and I expect they will rumble, because it’s hard for Bakole (21-2, 16 KO) to fight any other way. The man is a tank, as top prospect Jared Anderson learned last August when Bakole pretty much just bulldozed him and introduced the American to real opposition.
Yes, Bakole was stopped in two taking an extremely short notice shot at Joseph Parker in February. But that was a gutsy play by him, just didn’t pay off. And Parker is a top five heavyweight. Ajagba (20-1, 14 KO) isn’t that guy, and for years now has probably been a disappointment to those who once saw him as a major emerging threat. He’s won fights, but hasn’t really climbed the ladder much.
The rumble, though — that’s where the money is in this one. Bakole comes to fight, and Ajagba can either meet that energy — which we’ve seen him do in the past, notably against Iago Kiladze — or get trucked.
1. Teofimo Lopez vs Arnold Barboza (Friday, DAZN PPV)
By some distance the fight I’m most into this weekend. Barboza (32-0, 11 KO) may have never seemed “special,” but he just keeps plugging away. He gets a matchup, he wins. He gets another one, he wins. He struggles once, learns from it, comes back and scores the two best wins of his career, and now he has the fight he’s been chasing.
Teofimo (21-1, 13 KO) is just fascinating to me at this point. I truly believe that there is still a terrific fighter in there, somewhere. But we haven’t seen him for a while now. His best win in the last three years came over Josh Taylor, who had farted around for over a year avoiding a rematch with Jack Catterall and seemed to have lost the zip on his fastball, to mix sports metaphors.
Other than that, Lopez has struggled to get past Sandor Martin, struggled to really separate himself against Jamaine Ortiz, and just didn’t do much that had any flair to it with Steve Claggett, who was signed up as an opponent specifically to help Teofimo regain some of his old KO artist spark and pizzazz. He smashed Pedro Campa pretty good after his loss to Kambosos, but that was all but a gimme.
Barboza is similar to the guy he most recently beat, the aforementioned Catterall, in that he always fights his fight. It’s hard to drag him into anything else, he’s smart and crafty and really has a strong sense of what he wants to do out there. He doesn’t try to do too much, doesn’t try to be someone he isn’t. In that way, he’s a polar opposite to Teofimo, who at this point doesn’t seem like he has any clear vision of who he intends to be in the ring.
It always has to be said, though — if we get a version of Teofimo that is truly at his best, he might dominate and really start getting himself back on track. I don’t want to act like he’s 18, but at 27, it wouldn’t be the oddest thing in the world for a top athlete to go through a weird little stretch and then put it together. There is still time with him. If he really finds it, if life has settled for him, if he feels back to himself, he’s dangerous at 140 or 147 in time.
If not, Arnold Barboza Jr just might beat him by virtue of simply being truly dedicated to what he’s doing, and having the greater hunger and desire on the night. Either way, it’s absolutely the fight that has me most interested going into the weekend.
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