MarvNation has put together a pretty much industry-standard pay-per-view undercard for their Nov. 26 event, which will be headlined by the vacant WBC 140 lb title fight Jose Zepeda and Regis Prograis.
For much of the target audience here, Zepeda vs Prograis alone will be reason enough to watch the show, but a $60 price tag is a $60 price tag, and diehard boxing fans have been getting hit up with PPV charges pretty frequently the last couple of months, plus this is a month before Christmas.
Still, give MarvNation credit for not going awful, as we’ve got some good matchups and some good fighters in action.
Here’s the quick rundown:
- Evelyn Bermudez (17-0-1, 6 KO) will defend her IBF and WBO 108 lb titles against Yokasta Valle (26-2, 9 KO), who just unified those same belts at 105 lbs with a win over Thi Thu Nhi Nguyen on Sept. 8. Bermudez and Valle are two of the top fighters at the two lightest weight divisions, this is a good matchup.
- Top junior middleweight prospect Charles Conwell (17-0, 13 KO) will be in action against Juan Carlos Abreu (25-6-1, 23 KO). Conwell, 25, is getting to the point where he really needs to be more active and probably step up the competition. The 35-year-old Abreu is a veteran who can punch, and gave some tough rounds to Jamal James and Egidijus “Mean Machine” Kavaliauskas, and came off the canvas to stop amateur standout Tursynbay Kulakhmet in Oct. 2021. He also lost wide to Alexander Besputin and was stopped in six by Jaron “Boots” Ennis in 2020. If Conwell gets through this nicely, you hope 2023 will see him get in the mix at the world level.
- Bakhodir Jalolov (11-0, 11 KO), the 6’7” Uzbek southpaw heavyweight and gold medalist at the Tokyo Olympics, will face Curtis Harper (14-8, 9 KO). You may remember Curtis Harper from walking out of the ring immediately after the bell rang to start a 2018 fight with Efe Ajagba. He didn’t have another fight until 2021, and is 1-2 since coming back. The drama here may be whether he leaves the ring at 0:01 again, because on paper he is no challenge for Jalolov.
- Fernando Vargas Jr (6-0, 6 KO), the 26-year-old son of Fernando Vargas (who’d have thunk it!), will open the PPV against Alejandro Martinez (3-2-1, 2 KO). I’m not rushing to say Vargas isn’t a real prospect, but he’s definitely been handled with kid gloves so far since turning pro in Dec. 2020.
What do you think of the lineup? Does this make you any more likely to plop down 60 bones than you were before?