MAYER & RYAN AND ZEPEDA & FARMER GO GLOVE-TO-GLOVE AGAIN
That’s Friday night’s action out of the way—now onto Saturday, where two of the most talented and outspoken female boxers on the planet put it all on the line once again.
After such a close first fight, it was only right that Mikaela Mayer and Sandy Ryan went toe-to-toe again. Now, six months on from their first encounter, boxing fans get treated to it for a second time.
The reigning WBO champion going into the fight, Ryan’s fight night was marred by a controversial incident. As she left her hotel to travel to the arena, an unknown person launched a full tin of paint all over her.
The Brit was visibly shaken, but to her credit, she still went ahead with the fight when it would have been easy for her to pull out at the last minute.
In an extremely close affair, it was the American who came out on top. A fight that had many people split down the middle, the punch stats suggested that Ryan may have done just enough, having landed more punches in more rounds than Mayer and at a better percentage. However, two of the judges didn’t see it that way.
Either way, it sets us up nicely for the rematch, where both will be hoping to take the decision out of the judges’ hands.
On the undercard, the recently crowned WBO World Welterweight champion Brian Norman Jr makes the first defence of his crown against the 27-1-1 Mexican Derrieck Cuevas.
Norman, who caused a bit of an upset when stopping Giovani Santillan for the Interim title last May, was promoted to full champion back in August when Terence Crawford vacated the title to move up in weight.
The winner of this will find themselves in pole position for a potential unification fight with the likes of Mario Barrios and Jaron Ennis.
For the last instalment of our weekend preview, we head south to Cancún, where the highly rated William Zepeda will be looking to put the world back on notice again in a rematch of his November clash with Tevin Farmer.
Then 31-0 with 27 stoppages, the Mexican Zepeda was very much expected to make relatively light work of Farmer. However, “light work” was exactly the opposite of what it turned out to be.
Zepeda had to climb off the deck in round four to rally and eventually secure a split-decision victory in a fight in which many believed Farmer had done enough to win.
The scorecards summed up just how close the fight was, with two judges scoring it 95-94 in favour of Zepeda, while the other judge scored it the same way but in favour of Farmer instead.
For the first time in his career, there are question marks over just how good Zepeda is, so he will be looking to answer them in style with a big win—whether on points or, ideally, by stoppage.
On an action-packed undercard, minimumweight sensation Oscar Collazo will be hoping to keep eyes on the smaller divisions with another explosive performance against Edwin Hernandez, while Yokasta Valle looks to stake her claim as one of the best female fighters on the planet when she takes on Marlen Esparza.
