By Mark Eisner: George Kambosos Jr will be fighting tooth & nail tonight to stay relevant in his headliner IBF lightweight title eliminator against Maxi Hughes (26-5-2, 5 KOs) in a twelve round fight in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Kambosos’ career is on the line against Hughes.
Updates & results of tonight’s card will be shown below.
Last year, Kambosos (20-2, 10 KOs) was the guy with all the belts at 135 after his upset win over Teofimo Lopez in 2021.
Unfortunately for Kambosos, his reign as lightweight champion ended quickly with his loss to Devin Haney. In the rematch in October, Kambosos was beaten a second time in a worse fashion and showed that he was incapable of adapting.
Top Card @ 10 pm ET
George Kambosos Jr vs. Maxi Hughes
Keyshawn Davis vs, Francesco Patera
Preliminary card @ 6:10 p.m. ET
Giovani Santillan vs. Erick Bone
Jeremiah Milton vs. Willie Harvey
Troy Isley vs. Antonio Todd
Amron Sands vs. Hemi Ahio
Stephan Shaw vs. Joe Goodall
The live boxing action will be shown on ESPN, ESPN Deportes & ESPN+ starting at 10 pm ET/7 pm PT. The time of the fight between Kambosos & Hughes will likely be past 11 pm.
Will Kambosos’ career end tonight?
That’s the worry for this fight. If Hughes comes out with a good game plan that has Kambosos confused, there’s a possibility that he won’t adapt and will keep fighting the same way without figuring out how to solve what Maxi is doing.
You got to wonder if Kambosos has a plan B for tonight’s fight because he’s not shown to have one in past fights. That’s obviously a training issue.
If Kambosos Jr’s trainer is failing to adequately prepare him for fights like this, he will continue to fail. Interestingly, many people are giving Hughes no chance of winning tonight, feeling that Kambosos is too fast and talented for him. The fans could be wrong, and that could be the final nail in Kambosos Jr’s career.
Keyshawn Davis (8-0, 6 KOs), arguably the true star of tonight’s event on ESPN, will take on Francesco Patera (28-3, 10 KOs) in the co-feature bout.
Davis has recent wins over these fighters:
– Anthony Yigit
– Juan Carlos Burgos
– Omar Tienda Bahena
– Esteban Sanchez
Top Rank has been taking it easy with Keyshawn, moving him slowly like they often do with prospects. Where you got to start worrying is if he’s still being matched against soft opposition in his sixth year as a pro.
We saw that with Edgar Berlanga, who was never stepped up against quality opposition before he left the company.
