Miguel Berchelt faces Maxwell Awuku on Feb.10 in Cancun

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: WBC super featherweight champion Miguel Berchelt is now scheduled to defend his title against Maxwell Awuku on February 10 at the Plaza de Toros, in Cancun, Mexico. This is Berchelt’s third attempt at getting his next title defense scheduled, as he’s already had 2 other challengers drop out. Berchelt (32-1, 28 KOs) was scheduled to defend against #5 WBC Cristian Mijares, but he reportedly dropped out due to the money not being to his liking.

Berchelt was then supposed to defend against #39 WBC ranked Carlo Magali, but that fight is now off the board as well for an unknown reason.

The Ghanaian Awuku (44-3-1, 30 KOs) isn’t currently ranked in the World Boxing Council’s top 40 at 130, but you can expect them to rectify that soon with him getting a top 15 ranking before the fight takes place on February 10th.

Awuku has past defeats against these 3 fighters:

• Daud Yordan

• Liam Walsh

• Thomas Okanja Areetey

Yordan and Walsh are good fighters. There’s no shame in Awuku losing to them. Walsh beat Awuku in a decisive manner in defeating him by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 117-112, 119-111 and 117-113 back in October 2010. But that was almost 8 years ago, so Awuku has possibly improved since then, and he might be a better fighter. Awuku hasn’t lost a fight in close to 3 years since suffering a close 12 round unanimous decision defeat to Daud Yordan in June 2015. Yordan won by the sores 115-112, 117-110 and 114-113. Since that defeat, Awuku has won his last 4 fights in beating Joseph Adu (7-12), Nazaire Kpadonou (6-7), Jonathan Yarey (14-13) and John Oblitey Commey (9-21).

You can argue that one of the reasons why Awuku hasn’t been pushed up the rankings with the WBC is because he’s not been beating high caliber opposition. Awuku beats the lower level guys just fine, but when he faces good fighters, he loses. That puts the WBC in a position where they have to decide whether to rank Awuku highly based on his wins against opponents or rank him on him he loses each time he steps up against better fighters. Obviously, the WBC has chosen not to give Awuku a high ranking due to him only showing that he can beat poor opposition. But it’s still possible the WBC will elevate Awuku in their top 15 rankings as the Berchelt-Awuku fight draws nearer.

For the 26-year-old Berchelt, this will be his second defense of his WBC 130 lb. title he won last year in defeating Francisco Vargas by an 11th round knockout in January 2017. Berchelt defended his title once in beating Takashi Miura by a 12 round unanimous decision last July. That fight proved to be more difficult for Berchelt than his contest against Vargas.

Hopefully this opponent Awuku will stick it out and make it into the ring to face Berchelt, as it’s been a nightmare for the Mexican fighter to make his second defense of his WBC title.

If Berchelt successfully defends his WBC title against Awuku, he’ll next be facing #1 WBC Miguel ‘Mickey’ Roman, who is coming off of a 9th round knockout win over Orlando Salido last December.