Demetrius Andrade and Maciej Sulecki have agreed to terms for June 28

By Chris Williams

Boxingnews24.com

WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade and Maciej Sulecki have agreed to terms for a fight on June 28 on DAZN, according to Mike Coppinger. The unbeaten Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs) will be defending his WBO 160 lb title against mandatory Sulecki (28-1, 11 KOs) in Andrade’s hometown at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island.

This is an important fight for Andrade, who has been calling out Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin recently. Andrade even called out IBF welterweight champion Errol Spence this month, challenging him to move up two weight divisions to take him on for his WBO middleweight title. Andrade is trying anything he can to get noticed. He’s with DAZN now, so he should in theory eventually get fights against GGG and Canelo unless they continue to ignore him. If Andrade loses to Sulecki in two months from now on June 28, he can probably forget about ever getting a fight against Golovkin or Canelo. They’ll have the perfect excuse to ignore permanently, and focus on other fighters.

Mike Coppinger said this on his Twitter:

Demetrius Andrade and Maciej Sulecki have agreed to terms for a middleweight title fight June 28 on DAZN. The fight will be held at Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island, Andrade’s hometown. Great to see fighters built locally.”

This could be the toughest fight of Andrade’s 11-year pro career. He didn’t look so great in his last fight against Artur Akavov earlier this year on January 18 on DAZN at Madison Square Garden in New York. Andrade, 31, got a stoppage victory in the 12th round, but he still looked beatable in that fight. Every time Akavov would land something flush, Andrade would freeze for a second. Akavov, 5’8″, is an undersized middleweight with little punching power, but he was giving Andrade food for thought each time he hit him. It was lucky for Andrade that Akavov stopped throwing punches after the eighth round, and just took shots.

Sulecki defeated 34-year-old Gabriel Rosado last month on March 15 in a fight that saw both guys hit the canvas TWICE in the 10 round fight. Sulecki won the match by a 10 round unanimous decision by the sores 95-91, 95-93 and 95-91. Sulecki knocked Rosado down once in round one and another time in round eight. Sulecki didn’t go after Rosado in both rounds after dropping him. He was too patient each time he had Rosado hurt, and that allowed the fight to continue long enough for Rosado to finally connect with one of his big right hands in the ninth round that put Sulecki on the canvas. It was a big shot, and it wasn’t surprising that Sulecki went down from it.

Rosado had been swinging for the fences the entire fight, but he was too wild and primitive with his punches for him land any of them flush. Rosado’s persistence paid off in the ninth round when he connected with hard shot that dropped Sulecki. After Sulecki got up, Rosado started hammering him with punches to the back of the head. Rosado must have hit Sulecki at least eight times with rabbit punches to knock him down. That must have been a record for consecutive punches to the back of the head. The referee Shawn Clark seemed obvious to the location of Rosado’s punches during that sequence, because he didn’t waive off the second knockdown. Sulecki made out of the round, and was fine in the 10th. He went back to boxing Rosado, and won the fight. Rosado thought he had done enough to win the fight, but the reality is, he only fought well in the ninth round. All the other rounds, including the 10th, was dominated by Sulecki.