Sherdog’s Weekend Boxing Preview

Less than a week to go until week get to see more Daniel Dubois fireworks... pic.twitter.com/yd5KZSKoM6

— Boxing on BT Sport (@BTSportBoxing) September 21, 2019

WHAT: Daniel Dubois vs. Ebenezer Tetteh, Heavyweights
WHEN: Sept. 27
HOW TO WATCH: ESPN+ 3 p.m. ET
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: To see what all the fuss is about when it comes to Dubois.

Who is he? Considering how often he makes news for calling out guys like Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua while never having fought a Top 10 heavyweight and not having competed at the Olympic level as an amateur, it’s a legitimate question to ask. While he is currently only 12-0 with 11 knockouts and has never fought outside of the United Kingdom, many people in boxing think Dubois can be a future star in the heavyweight division. Why? Well, he is 6-foot-5, a knockout puncher, produces moments like this and is rumored to have dropped Joshua in sparring, though there are many who deny this ever happened. Further, he stays off social media and speaks well of his talented brothers and sisters, showing an interesting dichotomy between his big-name callouts and surprisingly modest personality.

His next opponent is Tetteh, an undefeated Ghanaian native. Like most Ghanaians, little is known about Tetteh as he has fought exclusively in Ghana; and as we know, beating Ghanaian opponents doesn’t always translate to international success. He has knocked out 16 of his 19 opponents and did pull off this nifty spin move in a fight once, but it’s impossible to know what kind of skills he has given his opponent list.

Dubois is supposed to be the next big thing, and he has a chance in an ESPN+ main event to show an American crowd why everyone thinks so.

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WHAT: Errol Spence Jr. vs. Shawn Porter, Welterweights
WHEN: Sept. 28
HOW TO WATCH: Fox PPV 9 p.m. ET
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: While it’s not the welterweight unification bout everybody wants, it’s still a good one. We get it. This isn’t the welterweight unification fight you want, but as the old saying goes, we can’t let the great get in the way of the good. So while we all want the great fight in Spence-Terence Crawford, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be satisfied with watching Spence-Porter, a fight that is quite good.

Spence and Porter were very friendly in making the bout, but things seem to have turned sour. On Premier Boxing Champions’ faceoff show, Spence attacked Porter for the close nature of his fights when compared to the massacres for which Spence has been responsible. Porter countered by talking about their level of competition and how, even in his big last fight, Spence was fighting a lightweight in Mikey Garcia. Spence noted that he won every round, then made the absurd claim he wasn’t trying to get the knockout despite telling Porter on PBC’s show that he was mad he couldn’t get the stoppage. When Porter scoffed at the statement, he added that he was trying to hurt Kell Brook in their fight and that he thinks he did. A relaxed Spence delivered the harsh “truth” saying, “You didn’t. You didn’t.”

Can Porter make the fight competitive? That question is going to depend on the strategy for which he opts. For years, Porter beat better boxers than himself by walking them down, roughing them up on the inside and taking away their superior skills with his brutish aggression -- a style Spence dismissed as “fighting like you drowning and you don’t know how to swim.” Apparently tired of how often he was dismissed as a football player boxing, starting in the Danny Garcia fight, Porter decided he was a boxer and bailed on this headfirst style for a new, slicker one. Against Garcia, it worked pretty well. Against Yordenis Ugas, it very much did not. Trying to bang with Spence is a tough task, but it’s hard to believe Porter will have any chance sitting on the outside and trying to box with him.

As for Spence, he can’t overlook the fight. With a win, he will own both the IBF and WBC titles at 147 pounds, and the only other men with titles in the division will be Manny Pacquiao and Terence Crawford. In a “Punch-Out” parody PBC put out, Spence is seen laying out a plan for fighting Pacquiao next -- Pacquiao has supposedly narrowed his opponent choices to Mikey Garcia or Danny Garcia -- and then talked about still wanting to fight Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia before finally mentioning Crawford. Aside from the absurdity of making Spence fight someone like Danny Garcia at this point in his career (if you want to boycott a Spence fight for not facing Crawford, that would be the right one), it was notable that even in promoting this fight, PBC and Spence himself felt comfortable enough to start talking about who’s next after he beats Porter.

About a 10-to-1 underdog, Porter is motivated. Spence disgraced him on the PBC countdown show, and Spence has been the one getting most of the promotion despite Porter having a belt himself. While we’ve seen him outboxed by guys like Kell Brook and Keith Thurman, we’ve also seen him make Adrien Broner look pedestrian with consistent forward pressure. If Spence is overlooking him and he can effectively mix the new and old Shawn Porters, he might leave the Staples Center with another welterweight belt. Either way, this is a fight to watch, even if it’s not the fight you want to be watching.

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WHAT: Anthony Dirrell vs. David Benavidez, Super Middleweights
WHEN: Sept. 28
HOW TO WATCH: Fox PPV 9 p.m. ET
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: To see if Dirrell threw away his chance at a fairytale ending or was just setting up an even better one. In his last fight, the 34-year-old won the vacant WBC super middleweight title over Avni Yildirim. However, that win came when an accidental headbutt caused a cut over Dirrell’s eye and the fight went to the scorecards in the tenth round. While he lost by a wide margin on the third card, Dirrell won 96-94 on the other two and claimed the title via split decision. While we will never know what the younger Yildirim could have done to Dirrell during the championship rounds, everyone seemed happy with Dirrell’s win because the aging veteran said before the fight that he was only continuing to fight until he won one last world title. Dirrell won the title and appeared ready to ride off into the sunset.

Yet this is boxing, and those feel-good stories rarely happen. Instead of retiring, Direll is now defending his title against a 22-year-old undefeated knockout machine. Benavidez is 21-0 and has stopped eighteen of his opponents, including a second-round stoppage of J’Leon Love in his last bout. He used to be the WBC 168-pound champion but tested positive for cocaine and was stripped of the title. Now, he’s facing Dirrell to get it back. As he points out, Dirrell has never been stopped -- in fairness, he has only lost to Badou Jack and was only dropped once, in his first fight since coming back from cancer -- so while Benavidez is a huge puncher, Dirrell has enough of a chin to try and play the older, wiser Bernard Hopkins type who can nullify the knockout puncher and survive if one of the huge blows sneaks through. Whether he can keep this “wily veteran” act up for 12 rounds will be the question of the fight.

Dirrell had his fairytale ending all lined up when he won his world title. Instead of retiring, he decided to face the man whose belt he took due to drug issues and not an in-the-ring battle. Dirrell is either writing an even better ending for himself or joining the all too numerous list of fighters who stayed for one fight too many.

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WHAT: Mario Barrios vs. Batyr Akhmedov, Junior Welterweights
WHEN: Sept. 28
HOW TO WATCH: Fox PPV 9 p.m. ET
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Because the winner of this fight might find himself backing into an incredible opportunity, through little effort of his won.

Barrios is 24 years old, 24-0 with 16 knockouts and on the verge of becoming a 140-pound titleholder. He’s fighting for the currently vacant WBA “regular” 140-pound title. Regis “Rougarou” Prograis owns the legitimate WBA 140-pound title. He’s fighting Josh Taylor in October, which will unify two of the titles, leaving Jose Ramirez as the only other man holding a 140-pound belt. That means whoever ends up holding the WBA belt is likely going to have to eventually fight Barrios. The point? Barrios could well end up becoming the undisputed 140-pound champion of the world because of the work of others.

He could also lose and never come close to that. He is facing Akhmedov, a 28-year-old Russian sporting a 7-0 record with six knockouts. Akhmedov had an extensive and successful amateur career fighting under the name Batuhan Gozgec, which culminated in his representing Turkey at the 2016 Olympics (he’s Ukrainian but didn’t represent Ukraine because Ivan Baranchyk already was at his weight class). A southpaw, Akhmedov sometimes gets compared in style to Vasyl Lomachenko and Oleksandr Usyk, and if you watch a highlight reel, it’s abundantly clear why. He is also following the Lomachenko path in that he has an extensive amateur career and doesn’t feel the need to run up a 30-0 pro record before facing legitimate competition.

Is it the 24-year-old knockout artist and hellacious body puncher who will show Akhmedov is like Lomachenko the same way USPA is like Polo? Or will Akhmedov show that while Usyk and Lomachenko may be special, their styles can be duplicated?

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WHAT: Robert Guerrero vs. Jerry Thomas, Welterweights
WHEN: Sept. 28
HOW TO WATCH: Fox Sports 1 7:30 p.m. ET
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: Because “The Ghost” Guerrero can’t be this shot, can he? Guerrero fought Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Keith Thurman at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas and battled Danny Garcia at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. In his last fight, Thomas fought some guy making his pro boxing debut named Brad Robinson at The Sportszone in Topeka, Kansas. It was Thomas’ 12th fight in Topeka, while the other three appearances of his career took place in Kansas City. Thomas is 14-1 with eight knockouts -- his sole loss came to Danny O’Connor -- against less-than-stellar competition.

Guerrero is 2-0 in his comeback to boxing. While PBC likely wants to give him some easy wins -- though some say PBC is high on Thomas -- since he’s a well-known name, this can only be described as sad. There’s no way Guerrero should be fighting someone this inexperienced, so why didn’t promoters put him against an at least reasonable opponent? Maybe they know how far gone he is at this stage of his career. That’s the No. 1 reason to watch this fight, because if Guerrero can’t look great against Thomas, he should call it a career. Guerrero isn’t going to be a world beater again, but even at 36 years old, he has to be better than this, right?