Via Mark Eisner: George Kambosos Jr will fight to the teeth tonight to maintain his lead in his IBF lightweight title elimination against Maxi Hughes (26-5-2, 5 KOs) in a twelfth round match in Shawnee, Oklahoma. Kambosos’ career is struggling for Hughes.
Tonight’s card updates & results will be presented below.
Last year, Kambosos (20-2, 10 KOs) was the all-timer at 135 after a nasty win over Teofimo Lopez in 2021.
Unfortunately for Kambosos, his reign as lightweight champion ended quickly with a defeat to Devin Haney. In the rematch in October, Kambosos was beaten a second time in worse form and showed his inability to adapt.
Top Cards @ 10pm ET
George Kambosos Jr vs Maxi Hughes
Keyshawn Davis vs Francesco Patera
Preliminary Card @ 6:10 p.m. ET
Giovani Santalla 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 match will be shown on ESPN, ESPN Deportes & ESPN+ starting at 10pm ET/7pm PT. The time of the battle between Kambosos & Hughes is likely to be more than 11pm.
Will Kambosos’ career end tonight?
That is the worry for this war. If Hughes comes up with a good game plan that confuses Kambosos, it’s likely he won’t adapt and will continue to fight the old fashioned way without finding a way to address what Maxi is doing.
You have to wonder if Kambosos has a plan B for tonight’s battle because he didn’t have this in previous battles. It’s clearly a training issue.
If Kambosos Jr’s trainer doesn’t adequately prepare him for battles like these, he will continue to fail. Interestingly, many thought Hughes had no chance of winning tonight, feeling that Kambosos was too fast and talented for him. Fans could be wrong, and that could be the final nail in Kambosos Jr.’s career.
Keyshawn Davis (8-0.6 KOs), arguably the real star of tonight’s event on ESPN, will take on Francesco Patera (28-3, 10 KOs) in a co-feature match.
Davis recently won these boxers:
– Anthony Yigit
– Juan Carlos Burgos
– Omar Tienda Bahena
– Esteban Sánchez
The top rating made things easy for Keyshawn, moving him slowly as they usually do with potential clients. What makes you start to worry is whether he’ll still be up against light opponents in his sixth year as a pro.
We saw it with Edgar Berlanga, who never fought back against quality before leaving the company.
