Shawn Porter faces Adrian Granados on Wilder-Ortiz card

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Shawn Porter (27-2-1, 17 KOs) will be taking a stay busy fight against the recently defeated light welterweight contender Adrian Granados (18-5-2, 12 KOs) in a 10 round fight on the undercard of WBC heavyweight champion Deontay “Bronze Bomber” Wilder’s title defense against Luis Ortiz on November 4 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The card will be televised on Showtime Championship Boxing. The start time for the card is at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.

Porter is trying to get fight with Danny Garcia and more importantly a rematch against Keith “One Time” Thurman, the WBA/WBC welterweight champion. Thurman is currently out of commission with an elbow injury for the remainder of 2017, so Porter has to stay busy the best way he can. Porter needs an impressive win over Granados to lock himself in for a world title shot.

Former IBF welterweight champion Porter defeated Andre Berto by a 9th round knockout in his last fight on April 22 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. For a mismatch, it was a fun fight to watch, with Porter knocking 3 times in the fight before the fight was eventually stopped in round 9. Porter had lost his previous fight against WBA World welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman by a 12 round unanimous decision on June 25, 2016.

It was a good fight with a lot of give and take from both guys, but Thurman clearly earned the win. Thurman hurt Porter on a couple of occasions, and took advantage of his aggressive style of fighting to get the decision win. If Porter was willing to fight Errol Spence Jr. for his IBF title, he would likely be getting a world title fight in 2017 instead of having to wait until Thurman’s injured elbow is 100% next year. Porter seems to prefer a seond fight against Thurman. Perhaps he feels he matches up against him better than he does against Spence, who is very talented and powerful.

The Wilder-Ortiz undercard is one of the best we’ve seen this year. It beats any of the pay-per-view undercards that we’ve seen with the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor and Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Those 2 big PPV events had little to see on their undercards.

”Against Granados I’m getting into the ring with someone who is very established as an amateur and a professional, has great skills and isn’t going to go in there and lay down,” said Porter. ”That’s always going to bring out the best in me, and that’s always going to create a very exciting match-up. I know that when I do what I’m planning to do, it’s going to be exciting, entertaining and fill the seats.”

I think there’s a lot of boxing fans that would disagree with Porter about his fight against Granados being an exciting match-up. You’ve got to do a little bit better than this if you want to get the boxing fans interested in seeing the No.1 WBC contender at 147 compete. Granados is a good – but not great – light welterweight, but he’s not a true welterweight.

The fans would prefer to see the 29-year-old Porter fight relevant contenders in the 147 lb. division like Danny Garcia, Jessie Vargas, Diego Chaves, David Avanesyan or Sam Eggington. Unfortunately, getting Danny Garcia to agree to a fight against Porter isn’t the easiest thing to do. Even if Garcia wasn’t available for the fight, it would have been more interesting to see Porter fight a welterweight like Eggington, Avanesyan, Vargas or Chaves. Those are good fighters that would give Porter a run for his money and maybe even beat him. Welterweight division has kind of thinned out as of recently with the talented guys moving up in weight or retiring after getting old. Kell Brook is moving up in weight after his second broken eye socket injury, and guys like Manny Pacquiao is about to retire. Floyd Mayweather Jr. just retired, again.

Porter held the IBF welterweight title from 2013 to 2014 before losing the belt to Kell Brook by a close 12 round majority decision on August 16, 2014. Porter fought well enough to win the fight, but Brook was able to do a lot of holding to keep him from throwing punches. The referee didn’t penalize Brook for his holding, so it was difficult for Porter to do much. Brook was diving forward to clinch Porter all night long. It was pretty clear that Brook’s team had come up with the nonstop clinching idea to shutdown Porter’s offense. Porter came back from that loss to win his next two fights in beating Erick Bone and Adrien Broner. The loss to Thurman ended Porter’s winning streak. He’s now come back from the loss to Thurman to beat Berto in his last fight.

Granados, 28, lost his last fight to Adrien “The Problem” Broner by a 10 round split decision on February 18 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was a close fight that Granados could have won. The judges favored Broner’s harder power shots over the more numerous shots that Granados was hitting him with throughout the fight. Granados has a notable win over Amir Imam in 2015 in an 8th round stoppage win. Granados was beaten by Felix Diaz, Brad Solomon, Broner and Frankie Gomez. All 4 of those fights were close enough for Granados to win. Granados also has a controversial 10 round draw against former welterweight champion Kermit Cintron on March 22, 2013. The judges didn’t give Granados much of any breaks in that fight, as he fought well in outworking Cintron and getting the better of him in almost every round of the fight. The scoring was very controversial.

Also on the undercard is undefeated light welterweight contender Sergey Lipinets fighting Akihiro Kondo for the vacant International Boxing Federation 140 lb. title that was recently vacated by Terence “Bud” Crawford. In addition to that fine fight, is former WBC heavyweight world title holder Bermane Stiverne making a rare appearance in facing 6’7” Dominic Breazeale in a scheduled 10 round fight. Stiverne will have his hands full if he can’t knockout Breazeale. It’s a tough fight for Stiverne. He’s not fought in 2 years since his win over Derric Rossy in 2015.