Quillin vs. Truax & Derevyanchenko vs. Culcay – official weights

By Mike Smith

Boxingnews24.com

Former WBO middleweight champion Peter “Kid Chocolate” Quillin (34-1, 23 KOs) weighed in at 167 1/2 pounds for his IBF super middleweight fight against former IBF 168 lb champion Caleb Truax (30-4-2, 19 KOs) in their IBF eliminator on Saturday night on Premier Boxing Champions
on FS1 and Fox Deportes at the Minneapolis Armory, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. For his part, the 35-year-old Truax weighed in at 167 3/4 pounds.

(Photo credit: Andrew Dobin/The Armory)

The winner of the Quillin-Truax will be the mandatory challenger to IBF super middleweight champion Caleb Plant. Just how soon the International Boxing Federation will get around to ordering the title shot for the Quillin vs. Truax fight is anyone’s guess. With both of them being 35-years-old, it’s in there best interest that the IBF doesn’t wait too long before ordering Plant to defend against them.

Traux is fighting at a high level still, and is starting to show signs of age. With Quillin, it’s hard to know whether his physical skills are in decline, because he’s not been all that active in the last four rounds, and he hasn’t fought a world class talent since he was knocked out in the first round by Daniel Jacobs in December 2015.

Quillin has won won his last two fights against J’Leon Love and Dashon Love, but he’s not been fighting all that often since vacating his World Boxing Organization middleweight title in 2014. At the time that Quillin vacated his WBO title, the sanctioning body had ordered him to defend against the always fought Matt Korobov. Not wanting to do that, Quillin vacated his WBO title, and took a year off from boxing. In hindsight, that probably wasn’t a good idea, because when Quillin did come back, he struggled against Andy Lee in fighting him to a 12 round draw on April 11, 2015.

Quillin looked sharp early in the fight in knocking Lee down in rounds one and three. However, Lee came back strong in the second half of the fight and knocked Quillin down in the seventh. It was all Lee from the sixth round on, as he controlled the fight against a tired looking Quillin. After that fight, Quillin returned to the ring in September 2015 in stopping a green Michael Zerafa in the fifth round. However, Quillin’s career took a big hit later in the year in him getting knocked out by Daniel Jacobs in the first round in December 2015. That defeat pretty much took the air out of Quillin’s career, as he’s fought seldom ever since. If Quillin has lost his self confidence, then he’s facing the wrong guy in Caleb Truax on Saturday. That’s someone that Quillin will need to be confident against for him to have a chance of beating.

Truax upset James DeGale in beating him by a 12 round majority decision in their first fight in December 2017. In their rematch in April 2018, Truax lost a controversial decision to DeGale in Las Vegas, Nevada. DeGale did little more than hold and move around the ring for 12 rounds. Somehow the judges that was enough to win, even though Truax landed all the hard shots in the fight. Last August, Truax bounced back from that defeat to stop Fabiano Soares in the third round.

Sergiy Derevyanchenko vs. Jack Culcay – Official weigh-in results

Sergiy Derevyanchenko (12-1, 10 KOs) weighed in at 159 lbs for his IBF middleweight title eliminator against former World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion Jack Culcay (25-3, 13 KOs). The 33-year-old Culcay weighed in at 159 1/4 lbs. The winner of the Derevyanchenko-Culcay fight will be the IBF mandatory to IBF middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs.

For the time being, Jacobs is the IBF 160 lb champion, but that might not remain that way for long. Jacobs is fighting WBA/WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez in a unification fight next month on May 4 on DAZN. The winner of that unification match will be a three-belt champion at middleweight in holding the IBF, WBA and WBC titles. If the IBF decides to order the Canelo-Jacobs winner to face the winner of the Derevyachenko vs. Culcay fight, it’ll likely make them very happy.

It’s a gift for Derevyanchenko, 33, that the IBF is letting him fight in an eliminator bout so soon after his 12 round split decision defeat at the hands of Jacobs last October. Derevyanhenko and Jacobs fought for the vacant IBF 160 lb title. Derevyanchenko gave a good effort in losing to Jacobs, but the fact remains that he was beaten by the New Yorker. Without having to wait long, Derevyanchenko could put himself back in position to get a lucrative title shot against the winner of the Canelo-Jacobs fight if he an beat Culcay. It’s not going to be easy though.

Culcay is a talented former Amateur talent, who recently gave Demetrius Andrade all he could handle in losing to him by a 12 round split decision on March 11, 2017. Andrade struggled with the constant heat that Culcay was putting on him. Andrade tried to knock him out, but Culcay wasn’t going anywhere, and made made it tough on the Rhode Island fighter. In Culcay’s fight immediately after that one, he was beaten by Maciej Sulecki by a 10 round unanimous decision on October 21, 2017. The scores were 98-92, 97-93 and 96-94. Sulecki did a better job beatigng Culcay than Andrade did.

On paper, 2008 Ukrainian Olympian Derevyanchenko might have a little too much for Culcay. Derevyanchenko has been looking really sharp in the last two years, beating Tureno Johnson and Dashon Johnson. Tureano is a talented fighter, and Derevyanchenko seemed to handle him well without struggling from the pressure that he was putting on him. Culcay is a pressure fighter too, and he would be seem to be the ideal opponent for Derevyanchenko.

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