Ray Beltran vs. Roman Andreev purse bid won by Top Rank

By Allan Fox: Top Rank won the purse bid on Tuesday for WBO lightweight champion Ray Beltran’s fight against #1 WBO Roman Andreev (21-0, 15 KOs) for their match on August 25. The fight will be taking place in Phoenix, Arizona. Top Rank won the purse bid with a winning bid of $252,000.

The 36-year-old Beltran recently won the vacant World Boxing Organization 135 lb. title with a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision over 40-year-old Paulus Moses last February. The WBO made it easy for Beltran to win the vacant WBO 135 lb. title by sanctioning a fight between him and Moses rather than picking one of the talented contenders to fight him like Teofimo Lopez, Yvan Mendy or Ryan Martin.

If Beltran (35-7-1, 21 KOs) beats Andreev, he’s expected to face fellow Top Rank fighter Vasyl Lomachenko in December in a unification fight. Lomachenko recently defeated WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares by a 10th round knockout to win his WBA title. In the 2nd round, Linares suffered a shoulder injury. He was able to fight the last 10 rounds with the injury. Afterwards Lomachenko needed surgery to repair the problem. Lomachenko’s promoter Bob Arum of Top Rank still wants to match him against Beltran later this year regardless that he’ll be coming off surgery.

It’s probably not the smartest thing for Arum to do. Beltran is a good fighter, but he’s getting long in the tooth at 37, and he’s not beaten anyone of note other than Moses, Bryan Vasquez, Jonathan Maicelo and Mason Menard. Beltran lost to Terence Crawford by a 12 round unanimous decision four years ago in November 2014. Before that, Beltran was arguably robbed of a victory in fighting to a 12 round draw against former WBO World lightweight champion Ricky Burns in September 2013. That looked like a clear victory for Beltran over Burns, who had suffered a broken jaw.

If Beltran loses to Andreev, then he can forget about a unification fight against Lomachenko in December.

The 32-year-old Andreev has been a pro for the last 10 years, but only now is he finally getting a title shot. Andreev has been toiling away for ages now and only now he’s getting a crack at a world title. The reason for that is the low level opposition. Only recently, Andreev has stepped it up in beating Craig Evans and Patrick Malinga. Those are the only notable victories on Andreev’s 10-year resume.

Isaac Dogboe to defend against Hidenori Otake on August 25th

WBO super bantamweight champion Isaac Dogboe (19-0, 13 KOs) will be making his first defense of his WBO 122 lb. title on August 25 against #6 WBO Hidenori Otake (31-2-3, 14 KOs) in Phoenix, Arizona. This will be a voluntary defense for the 23-year-old Dogboe. He recently defeated WBO 122lb champion Jessie Magdaleno by an 11th round knockout on April 28 in Philadelphia. Dogboe plans on fighting WBA 122 lb. champion Danny Roman soon in a unification match, but before he does that, he wants to make one defense of the belt against the 36-year-old Otake.

Dogboe looked impressive in his last fight in stopping the 26-year-old Magdaleno. In the early rounds, Magdaleno gave Dogboe problems with his size and power. He was able to drop Dogboe in round 1. Magdaleno continued to give Dogboe problems in the first quarter of the fight. However, Dogboe’s superior conditioning kicked in and he was able to take control over the fight and batter Magdaleno to an 11h round KO. The victory for Dogboe was his second straight impressive victory. In his previous bout, Dogboe stopped Cesar Juarez in the 5

th round. Juarez is a good fighter, but he was no match for Dogboe, who knocked him down twice in the fight in dropping him in the 2nd and 5th rounds.

Otake is a 13-year pro from Japan, who only has two defeats on his resume to Scott Quigg and Manabu Koguchi. The problem that Otake has had is he’s not stepped it up against better opposition during his career. He’s been padding his resume for the most part for the entirety of his career with the exception of his fight against Quigg, which he lost. It’s too bad it’s taken this long for Otake to finally step it up after his loss to Quigg.

Dogboe, 5’2”, will be giving away 5 ½” inches in height to the 5’7 1/2” Otakke. It could be tricky for Dogboe to deal with the huge height and reach advantage that take has going for him. It’s not going to be easy because most of the guys that Dogboe has been fighting have been more or less the same height as him.

Dogboe looks like a future star in the sport. At 23, Dogboe has the potential to be around for a long, long time if he stays motivated and keeps winning. As long as Dogboe doesn’t let success spoil his career, he should be able to have a great career. Unfortunately for Dogboe, his 5’2” height will limit his ability to move up in weight to featherweight and super featherweight. Dogboe is simply too short to move up in weight to the 126 and 130 lb. weight classes. If Dogboe can continue to make weight at 122 for his entire career, he could be very special in this weight class. His fighting style is more exciting than Guillermo Rigondeaux, so that will help his chances for one of the networks in the U.S to televise his fights for the American boxing fans. Dogboe has an excellent engine that goes a lot with his speed and punching power that makes him very hard to beat. He’s clearly the class of the 122lb division now that Rigondeaux has disappeared since his loss to Lomachenko.