When Frank Warren first announced Saturday’s “Night of Champions” at Wembley Arena it looked like a great card. Danny Williams was headlining in his final fight and promised a war with Sam Sexton. Also, after a bout of verbal handbags Matt Skelton and Derek Chisora were set to settle things in the ring, while the undercard was packed with the likes of Kevin Mitchell, the exciting Kell Brook and a host of up and coming British fighters.
Then all of a sudden Sexton and Skelton pulled out with injury, leaving Williams without a fight. He was lined up to face Chisora but then he lost his marbles and did one of his famous vanishing acts. This left Chisora without a rival, so they had to draft in Carl “the Fridge” Baker who is essentially a club fighter. As well as that Brook, who is arguably Britain’s most exciting up and coming fighter, pulled out. Disappointing.
Still the show must go on and we now have a joint headliner in the form of undefeated duo Mitchell and Nathan Cleverly.
Cleverly has the most appropriate name in boxing as he is studying Maths at university and he will need to get his angles right to come through his match-up with veteran Italian Antonio Brancalion. They are going head-to-head for the vacant European light-heavyweight title and it is another step up in class for Cleverly. The Welshman is a former Enzo Calzaghe protégé and has an impressive record of 18-0 with eight knock outs. He’s won his last five fights inside the distance but this is going to prove a tougher equation. The wily Italian will probably take a bit longer for Cleverly to work out but Cleverly still has the potential to take him way before the final bell. Brancalion was blown away inside the first round in his last fight against Juergen Braehmer, who has since gone on to claim the WBO title, but he has the experience to make Cleverly scratch his head a bit.
In the other headliner Mitchell is defending his WBO Intercontinental lightweight title against Columbian Ignacio Mendoza, who’s fighting with a 27-5-2 record which includes 18 knock outs. You may recall Mendoza from his bout with John Murray back in 2005. That fight saw the Leicester lightweight prevail with an eighth round knockout and Mitchell will be happy with a similar result. He was on great form in his last match-up against another Columbian, Briedis Prescott, fighting a tactical and intelligent fight. A win here should give him a world title shot.
The heavyweights were the ones everyone was looking forward to when this card was first announced. A great opportunity to bid farewell to the warrior Williams, Chisora and Skelton were also developing an interesting little rivalry with Skelton calling Chisora “a plonker”. Then, unfortunately “the Brixton Bomber” went mental and disappeared, everyone else got injured and we are left with Chisora and Baker. Chisora has proved himself to be arrogant with only a fraction of the ability he believes himself to have, while Baker is just happy someone has shown some level of interest in him. Baker is known as the fridge and by the look of him he earned that by years of raiding them. We are set to see a low-pedigree fight as two big men waddle around the ring before the flabby Baker hits the deck around the fifth; his layers of fat should cushion the fall for him.
After that we got a succession of Frank Warren youngsters who have some relatively easy fights. We have a couple of Olympians in James De Gale and “Fun-time” Frankie Gavin. De Gale is taking on Matthew Barr and will be looking for his first comprehensive victory. De Gale was the most exciting of the Olympians but he has flattered to deceive so far and will have to put on a show in order to start winning over his critics.
It’s actually Gavin who has taken to the pro ranks the best out of all the former Olympians. Fun-time is yet another promising British light-welterweight and he is raising the standard of his opponents by taking on Irish workhorse Peter “Connemara Kid” McDonagh. McDonagh has the experience to cause Gavin problems and with only six rounds to prove his worth this is Gavin’s toughest test yet.
Elsewhere on the cards the trio of Walsh brothers, Michael, Liam and Ryan all have relatively easy matches and should come through unscathed as their fledgling careers move on to the next stage.
So it’s not exactly the night of champions Frank Warren promised. It would have been nice to see Williams but he’s always prone to doing bizarre things and even though he says he’s “shot” as a fighter I doubt it is the last we will see of him. Mitchell’s career is going from strength to strength and Cleverly is making a name for himself so there is still plenty of boxing to enjoy.
It may not quite be “the night of champions” but at least it’s not “the night of chump-ions”.
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