The vacant European Super Chicken Championship will take place at the Telford International Center on Saturday night when local favorite Liam Davies takes on Ionut Baluta.
BT Sport broadcast a Queensberry commercial that also featured Anthony Yarde preparing for his hit on light-heavyweight king Artur Beterbiev in a 10th round against Stefani Koykov, a 30-year-old from Bulgaria. , lives in Germany.
Baluta and Davies both racked up massive wins over the first three-week period of this year.
Baluta shocked Brad Foster, former champion of England and the Commonwealth, at York Hall in May and then Davies defied pre-match odds of 11/4 to strip Salford of the British belt. Southpaw Marc Leach.
It’s a measured display, compiled by Davies. The 26-year-old is known as a boxer, getting drawn into fights, but against Leach, he kept his discipline after knocking him down in the first round.
Davies doesn’t rush anything, doesn’t go too far, picks his moments and wins two, three and six points on the card. There had never been six innings between them, but the consensus was, the right man won in a tight skirmish and there were no complaints from camp Leach.
Baluta, from Romania and now living in Watford and training with Josh Burnham in Bushey, is a step up from Leach and others Davies has faced during his 12-0 professional career.
Baluta’s five most recent opponents have a combined record of 73-4-2 – and he has beaten four of them, losing to the other by a majority. He makes it difficult for TJ Doheny (22-1), ambushes David Oliver Joyce (12-1), pushes Michael Conlan (14-0) to the point where a referee equals them and then shocks Foster (14-0) -1-2).
Baluta isn’t the most gifted boxer, doesn’t have the strongest punches, but he makes the most of himself.
Burnham said Baluta played 10 rounds of four minutes with Joe Cordina in the countdown to his successful IBF title challenge earlier this year.
Baluta, nicknamed ‘Il Capo’ or ‘The Boss’, represented Romania at the European Junior and Senior European Championships before turning professional at the age of 22 and as a A professional athlete, he learned to win matches on the right hand side of the bill.
The 28-year-old says he will qualify for the knockout stages, so perhaps he will overtake Davies the way he overcame Joyce at York Hall in September 2020.
Baluta actually picked the Irishman, one combination after another before knocking him out in the third round and forcing the game to stop.
Perhaps Baluta imagined that if he put it on Davies, he could drag him into the scraps the way Nicaragua’s Dixon Flores did in the first innings before Liam followed coach Errol’s instructions. Johnson to “box the way home”.
Burnham said: “I appreciate Liam, but he’s trying to move a bit fast. He fought with 11 companions and Marc Leach. Twelve rounds with a counter-attacker like Leach is different from 12 rounds with a psychopath like Baluta.”
Davies was sure to grow as a boxer after his fight with Leach and says he wasn’t quite fit that night.
He is still troubled with a rotator cuff injury that forced him out of the match against Andrew Cain in April.
Davies said that with both hands working, he would have too much for Baluta. He told Boxing News: “He can understand what he does. He throws a lot of punches and tries to overwhelm you and I won’t let him do that. I believe he is tired and my strength will slow him down soon.
“I will show my authority in the fight, slow down the pace and take away the confidence he has built up.”
Interestingly, Davies says that Baluta is “readable”. Conlan describes him as unpredictable.
Conlan came out on top in the final rounds to get a majority of votes above 12 and perhaps importantly, Baluta’s best wins came after 8 and 10 innings, instead of 12.
This match will most likely be balanced to enter the championship rounds and we will let Baluta take a close decisive goal.
More predictable was the 10-round match between Yarde and Koykov.
Organizer Frank Warren says Yarde “needs some time in the ring” before challenging Artur Beterbiev for the 175 lbs belt in January, as he hasn’t boxed since winning his previous rematch. Lyndon Arthur last December.
Yarde overtakes Arthur in four minutes and Koykov is unlikely to last that long. He had 12 early wins with a 14-1 record, but in his third professional match, Koykov was knocked down three times and stopped by Rene Molik (1-3) after two innings. The check is currently 3-10-1.
Yarde won early 21 of his 24 matches and nearly won the remaining three on stoppage, including Sergey Kovalev’s challenge for the WBO belt in August 2019.
He can get rid of Koykov within four.
Also on the bill was the promising 9-0 score Eithan James. The 22-year-old ultralightweight from Northampton stepped up from the eight-round level to take on Woodville’s Connor Parker, 14-1 (1). Parker, a southbound, is a former Midlands Area champion but his career stalled after a loss to Sam Maxwell in November 2019. James’ run could work in his favor here. We expect hm to take a close win on points.
Crowd-pleaser Jamie Stewart, 3-2-2, makes a second defense of the Midlands Area welterweight belt against Worcester’s Owen Cooper, 6-0 (2). The man from Longton is a narrow favorite but this can happen either way.
VERIFY: Three ‘bargain’ skirmishes are certainly entertaining while Yarde will win in a flash.
