A POTENTIAL DOMESTIC CLASSIC WITH WORLD HONOURS ON THE LINE

Wales and Northern Ireland, two areas of Great Britain renowned for breeding boxing talent, and this weekend we see two of their finest sons go glove to glove for the IBF World Super-Featherweight championship on a historic night in Saudi Arabia.

The reigning belt-holder, Joe Cordina, will be looking to defend his world title for the second time whilst the challenger, Anthony Cacace, is aiming to become Northern Ireland’s first world champion in over seven years.

A 2016 Olympian, Cordina has developed a reputation as being one of the best technical boxers on the planet in recent years.

A British champion at lightweight, he dropped down to 130lbs to campaign at super-featherweight as he went in search of world honours, and what a decision that turned out to be.

In just his fifth fight at the weight, he produced one of the best knockouts you are ever likely to see when dethroning Kenichi Ogawa for the IBF world title in front of a sold-out Cardiff International Arena.

Goosebumps.

Due to boxing politics, he ultimately had to vacate the title immediately but won it back in emphatic fashion when edging out Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov in a fight-of-the-year contender to become a two-time world champion.

A successful defence against Edward Vazquez followed in another close fight, and that win has set up this domestic dust-up with Belfast’s Cacace.

After making his professional debut in February 2012, Cacace has flown much further under the radar than Cordina.

With no big promoter backing him, he moved to 15-0 in less than five years before suffering the first and only defeat of his career so far at the hands of the then-unbeaten Martin Ward for the British and Commonwealth Super-Featherweight titles.

However, since that defeat in the summer of 2017, he’s recorded six straight wins, one of which saw him become British champion at the second time of asking when beating Sam Bowen, before he put on a classy performance to drop Leon Woodstock on his way to a unanimous points win.

What makes this fight so exciting is their styles.

Both are technically sound, both can box on the outside and possess the ability to make their opponents look fairly average, but most importantly, both have shown that they carry big enough power, confidence and cojones to sit in the pocket and bang it out on the inside.

The one big difference is the fact Cordina is orthodox, with Cacace a southpaw.

There’s no denying this fight could quite easily turn out to be a 12-round chess match.

However, these are two hungry fighters who will want to make a statement and impress Uncle Turki to book their place at the Riyadh Season table when the next dinner party comes around.

With the likes of Emanuel Navarrete and Shakur Stevenson now campaigning up at lightweight, the super-featherweight division is arguably as wide open as it has been for several years.

WBC champion O’Shaquie Foster faces a tough test against Olympic gold medallist Robson Conceicao in July, while WBA champion Lamont Roach defends his world title for the first time against Ireland’s Feargal McCrory at the back end of June.

The WBO champion, Emmanuel Navarrete, has moved up as previously mentioned and interim champion Oscar Valdez is on the comeback trail once again, so depending on what Navarrete does after fighting Denys Berinchyk for the WBO lightweight world title, either of those two could be a good fight for the winner of Cordina vs Cacace.

Any unification fight for either Cordina or Cacace will be big, but are any of those names huge money fights? Probably not.

For that, they’ll probably need to look north at the lightweight division where there is no shortage of talent with the likes of Shakur Stevenson, Vasyl Lomachenko, Gervonta Davis and William Zepeda all plying their trade at 135lbs.

Either way, whoever wins this fight will find themselves in pole position for a unification shot at super-feather, but hopefully they reap the rewards outside of the ring as much as they do inside of it.

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