With UK boxing back on the menu, Matchroom has unveiled its full lineup for the coming months.
There’s a whole lot going on here, so let’s just stick with the highlights.
Warrington (30-0, 7 KO) had been targeting a unification match with WBA “world” champ Xu Can, but that’s now reportedly planned for later this year in the hopes of securing a live audience. He instead meets 22-year-old Mauricio Lara (21-2, 14 KO), an unheralded Mexican super featherweight who’s fought outside his home country just once, on February 13th.
Avanesyan (26-3-1, 14 KO) vs. Kelly (10-0-1, 6 KO) was the major casualty of the BBBofC suspending boxing this month. The crossroads bout, which pits the late-blooming former against the promising-but-inconsistent latter, was scheduled for January 22nd.
Povetkin (36-2-1, 25 KO) vs. Whyte (27-2, 18 KO) and Okolie (15-0, 12 KO) vs. Glowacki (31-2, 19 KO) were both delayed by COVID. The former went from November 21st to January 30th when Povetkin was hospitalized, then got bumped further back as “Russian Vityaz” required more recovery time. Glowacki caught the virus ahead of their planned December 12th clash, leaving Okolie to brutalize Nikodem Jezewski on the Joshua-Pulev undercard instead.
Povetkin-Whyte 2 includes Ted Cheeseman (16-2-1, 9 KO) vs. James Metcalf (21-0, 13 KO) and Fabio Wardley (10-0, 9 KO) vs. Eric Molina (27-6, 19 KO).
Conor Benn (17-0, 11 KO) vs. Samuel Vargas (31-6-2, 14 KO) is new. Vargas has shared the ring with a number of top fighters and beaten none of them, making him a step sideways for the rapidly improving “Destroyer.” Benn ran over Sebastian Formella in his lone 2020 effort, while Vargas got mauled by Vergil Ortiz Jr. The undercard includes a rematch between Rachel Ball (7-1, 0 KO) and Shannon Courtenay (6-1, 3 KO) for the WBA bantamweight belt and Savannah Marshall’s (9-0, 7 KO) inaugural defense of her WBO middleweight belt.
Other names of note include Anthony Fowler, Chris Billam-Smith, and WBC super lightweight champion Chantelle Cameron (13-0, 7 KO), who defends her title against onetime featherweight champ Melissa Hernandez (23-7-3, 7 KO)