Demetrius Andrade vs. Alantez Fox – Weights

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: Unbeaten WBA World light middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade (24-0, 16 KOs) weighed in at 160 pounds for his first fight at middleweight on Saturday night against Alantez Fox (23-0-1, 11 KOs) at the Turning Stone in Verona, New York.

Fox, 25, weighed in at 159.9 lbs. The Andrade vs. Fox fight will be televised on Saturday night on HBO “Boxing After Dark.” The start time for the Andrade-Fox fight is at 10:05 p.m. ET/7:05 p.m. PT.

(Photo credit: Emily Harney / Banner Promotions)

In weights for the main event, WBA super featherweight champion Jezreel Corrales came in overweight in weighing 133.25 pounds for his fight against Alberto Machado. As such, Corrales loses his title and doesn’t have a chance to win back the belt. Machado weighed in successfully at 130 lbs.

The 2-time junior middleweight champion Andrade is leaving the 154lb. division to go after the bigger fights at 160. Andrade specifically wants to fight Saul Canelo Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. It might take Andrade a while before he can get any of those fighters to face him though unless the World Boxing Association wants to give him a No.1 ranking at 160 based off his WBA championship status at 154. If Andrade has to earn his way to the No.1 spot like other fighters do, it could take him a while to get to a top ranking at middleweight.

Canelo Alvarez showed no interest in fighting Andrade when he was at 154, and it’s not likely that this will change at 160. Canelo is not a world champion at 160. Even if Canelo does beat Gennady Golovkin in their rematch next year on May 5, he probably won’t hold onto the titles and defend them against guys like Andrade. Canelo alvaredy vacated titles in the past. He’ll probably do the same again if he’s not interested in defending the titles against guys that bring nothing to the table.

Andrade is now fighting on HBO Boxing. This is his chance to slowly build a fan base so that he can get guys like Canelo and GGG to fight him.

Andrade has not been the busiest of fighters in the last 3 years. Andrade fought only once in 2014 in defending his WBO 154lb title, and then once in 2015 and 2016. Andrade has 3 fights to show for himself between 2014 and 2016. In Andrade’s last fight, he had problems beating Jack Culcay on March 11 of this year. Andrade won a 12 round split decision, but he had a tough time in a fight that he should have breezed to an easy victory.

The question is has Andrade lost some of his boxing ability due to his 3 years of being largely inactive? Fox isn’t a talented enough fighter to expose Andrade, but some of the top guys in the division will surely do that if Andrade isn’t able to fight at a higher level than what he displayed against Culcay. Andrade wants Canelo and Golovkin, but he has a lot to prove before he can get fights against those guys.