The Tszyu-Fundora blogpost

I've been anticipating a last-minute change in the schedule and I'm somewhat surprised it took this long. Sebastian Fundora was originally scheduled to face Serhii Bohachuk for Charlo's "vacant" WBC title at 154lbs at the end of the month, this fight was on the undercard of Tim Tszyu's non-title headliner against Keith Thurman. In my March predictions I said "Fundora is coming back from his knockout loss to Brian Mendoza last April and is waltzing straight into a title fight". Thanks to Thurman pulling out of his fight due to an injury (not the first time for "One Time"), Fundora will now be fighting for the WBC title as well as Tszyu's WBO title @154lbs.

Yes, Fundora is saving the card/PPV but it's still ridiculous to go from getting counted out to getting an immediate unified title shot. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that Tszyu soundly defeated Brian Mendoza, the very same Brian Menzonda who knocked the proverbial out of Sebastian Fundora.

There are some known unknowns since Tszyu was preparing for a completely different type of fighter in Thurman. But the dramatic nature of Fundora's loss to a lesser boxer than Tszyu means I'm not convinced of an upset.

Prediction: Tszyu by KO/TKO in the second half of the fight

But wait, there's more! (And also a tl;dr at the end because I didn't plan to write this much.)

Boxing is not like other sports

The biggest challenge of predicting every single world title fight in a calendar year is keeping track of all 68 official belts - 17 weight divisions by 4 organisations for those wondering. I don't want to give any legitimacy to bridgerweight and I'm working under the assumption that all the current Ring/lineal titlists hold "actual" titles. Even with this barebones approach and access to multiple online outlets that specialise in boxing, it's actually quite difficult to find out what fights are happening. Let alone if it's even available to watch in your country.

There is no singular list of "every upcoming/scheduled title fight". The Ring, ESPN, and BoxingScene curate lists of what they subjectively consider to be big or noteworthy fights. BoxRec is an awful and untrustworthy website. I know those are strong words but their own disclaimer at the bottom of every page says that "Data may be incomplete/inaccurate", and it often is. BadLeftHook is quite thorough, if a little slow to update sometimes, though they also understandably lean more towards Western fighters/promoters/broadcasters. Dear reader, it's [current year]. If I look up soccer or tennis schedules I can easily find fixtures for every league, competition, tournament etc in the world. In other sports, the legwork is done for you by people who want your interest.

What I'm saying is that despite actively seeking information about every world title fight from multiple sources, I almost completely missed that Angelino Cordova will be challenging Julio Cesar Martinez for his WBC title @112lbs on the undercard of Tszyu-Fundora. Despite the fight being in 10 days, it's nowhere to be seen on the websites of Boxrec, "The official record keeper for combat sports worldwide", or self-proclaimed "Bible of Boxing", Ring Magazine. It's also completely missing from schedules on:

• BoxingScene
• ESPN
• Boxing News magazine / boxingnewsonline.net
• BoxingNews24 (lol)
• CBS Sports (schedule updated "20hrs ago")
• talkSPORT (double lol)
• ProBoxTV
• fightnights.com (better known as @boxing on Twitter, schedule updated yesterday)
• fightnews.com ("Continuously updated all day, every day in 2023! – Reload often!")
• Tapology ("The site for serious fans of the UFC, MMA, Boxing, and other combat sports."

Only the aforementioned BadLeftHook and betting-oriented website box.live listed it. I tend to avoid the latter because gambling is a social ill that destroys lives and profiting off of it is unconscionable. Much criticism is thrown at sportswashing and I wish more people had the same fervor against gambling companies, sports betting has entrenched itself to an extent that would have been unimaginable just a few generations ago. Their entire modus operandi is to get as many people addicted as possible and ideally at as young an age as possible. The playbook is nothing new. And unlike petrostates on the other side of the world, these companies are at your door having just ransacked your neighbour's house. But I digress.

The other big reason I don't use box.live is that their format is dumb. Only the main event of a card has titles listed and worse still they count fictional secondary titles as legitimate.

It's strange that BoxingScene wrote about Martinez-Cordova a couple of weeks ago and Tapology has got a tale-of-the-tape page for it but neither listed it. Other than PBC's website saying that the fight was on, the only other written confirmation I could find was from Dan Rafael. His writing is insipid, his voice is uninspiring, his eyes are vacant, but unfortunately he is the boxing guy. What he lacks in backbone or soul he occasionally makes up for in scoops, it's a shame that he doesn't use his prominent position for anything meaningful.

tl;dr

So it's confirmed Julio Cesar Martinez will fight Angelino Cordova on March 30th. Martinez last lost back in a 2022 non-title bout after a dominant performance by Nicaraguan fenómeno Román "Chocolatito" González. Cordova is no Chocolatito. His record of 18-0-1 consists almost entirely of people with more losses than wins, but his claims to fame are that he got questionable decision wins over Axel Aragon Vega and former titlist Angel Acosta in 2022 and 2023 respectively. It would be unwise of Martinez to leave it in the grubby hands of judges. He bounced back from the loss to Gonzalez with two successful defenses and I would expect him to make it three.

Prediction: Martinez by KO/TKO in the first half of the fight