The November 4th showdown between Deontay Wilder and Luis Ortiz won’t be the only title fight on the card. Sergey Lipinets, already known to be a participant, reportedly has a foe for his shot at the vacant IBF super lightweight title: Japan’s Akihiro Kondo, whom the IBF ordered him to negotiate with a few weeks back.

Lipinets (12-0, 10 KO) worked his way through the 140-pound ranks on several PBC shows, where his extremely fan-friendly slugging earned him a couple of headlining spots. He was Terence Crawford’s mandatory for a while, but Crawford made the decision to unify against Julius Indongo and vacated his IBF belt soon after.

Kondo (29-6-1, 16 KO) is ranked #3 by the IBF to Lipinets’ #1. There is no IBF #2. He’s on an eight-fight winning streak, but two of those guys were making their debuts and another was 0-1.

Is this what it looks like on paper, or does Kondo actually have some secret weapon I’m not seeing?