Top Rank has announced that Brian Norman Jr. will be defending his WBO welterweight title against the capable contender Derrieck Cuevas in the co-feature spot on the Keyshawn Davis vs. Gustavo Lemos card on ESPN+ on November 8th at the Scope Arena in Norfolk, Virginia.
An Upside-Down Card
The valuable diamond, Norman Jr. (26-0, 20 KOs), will go to war with the hard-hitting #7-ranked WBO contender Cuevas (27-1, 19 KOs) in the chief support and will likely steal the show from the main event clash between Keyshawn and Lemos.
It’s an upside-down card, with talented fighters like Brian Norman Jr. and Abdullah Mason on the undercard while the struggling, flawed Keyshawn is in the main event.
Undercard Gems
– Kelvin Davis vs. Yeis Solano
– Abdullah Mason vs. Yohan Vasquez
– Troy Isley vs. Tyler “Hercules” Howard
– Austin DeAnda vs. DeAundre Pettus
Top Rank will eventually get it right in future cards, putting the diamond talents like Norman and Mason on display and stowing Keyshawn below decks in the cargo hold.
Promoter Bob Arum is pushing hard to make Keyshawn a star, but his work has been cut out because he’s shown the kind of talent that Brian Norman Jr. has displayed. In recent fights, Keyshawn has looked like a lemon, struggling against Miguel Madueno and Nahir Albright.
In the Madueno fight, Keyshawn looked like a WWE wrestler, using wrestling moves to avoid getting knocked out by the powerful Mexican fighter. He looked like one desperate dude trying to save his hide in whatever way he could: to go full WWE.
Time to Offload the Lemon?
After that fight, if I were one of the top brass for Arum’s company, I would be figuring out how to offload the lemon, Keyshawn, because he’s not panning out.
Those fights showed that Keyshawn is not the guy that some people thought he would be coming out of the Olympics in 2020. However, if fans had watched Keyshawn’s fight against Cuban Andy Cruz in the finals of the 2020 Olympics, you could see that he would have problems in the pro ranks because he couldn’t handle pressure.
Cruz backed Keyshawn up and broke him with pressure, beating him for the fourth time. The unheralded Nahir Albright took a page out of Andy Cruz’s playbook by using pressure to wear down Keyshawn in the later rounds of their match last October in Texas.
He had Keyshawn hurt in the eighth round and dominated the rest of the way. The fight was later ruled a no-contest after Keyshawn tested positive for marijuana.
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