Tureano Johnson vs. Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Aug.25

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By Allan Fox: #1 IBF middleweight contender Tureano Johnson (20-1, 14 KOs) will be meeting #2 IBF Sergiy Derevyanchenko (10-0, 8 KOs) in title eliminator this month on August 25 on Premier Boxing champions on FS1 at the Buffalo Run Casino, in Miami, Oklahoma.

This is a toss-up fight between 2 very good middleweights. The winner of the Johnson- Derevyanchenko fight has an outside chance of facing Saul “Canelo” Alvarez if he defeats IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in their fight on September 16.

If Canelo wins that fight, he will likely keep the IBF and WBA titles, but he’s made it known that he doesn’t want the WBC belt. If Canelo doesn’t vacate the IBF belt, then he could face the winner of the Johnson vs. Derevyanchenko fight at some point in time. If Golovkin beats Canelo, he’s going to look to win the WBO title from champion Billy Joe Saunders. It’s not probable that Golovkin will keep the titles after that point if he defeats Saunders. Golovkin will vacate his middleweight titles and move up in weight. That’ll leave the IBF title for the winner of the Johnson vs. Derevyanchenko fight. I’m sure they’d rather fight Golovkin for the belt rather than win it outside of the ring, but that’s not likely to happen unless Triple G decides to remain at middleweight. It would be a tough task for the Johnson-Derevyanchenko winner to beat Golovkin. I can’t see it happening.

The Johnson-Derevyanchenko will be taking place on a Friday on PBC. It’s a good fight.

Johnson, 33, should arguably be still unbeaten at this point. His 10th round stoppage loss to Curtis Stevens on April 4, 2014 was a very questionable one. Johnson was well ahead on the scorecards going into the 10h and final round. Stevens buzzed Johnson with a big shot, and then all of a sudden the referee Gary Rosato stepped in quickly and stopped the fight. Johnson did not look hurt enough for the fight to be stopped. It was an odd stoppage. If the referee hadn’t jumped in and halted the fight when he did, Johnson very likely would have survived the round and won the fight. It looked like the referee was very hasty in stopping the contest. It kind of reminded me a lot of how referee Tony Weeks launched himself between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev and stopped the fight in the 8th round on June 17 after Ward had appeared to hit Kovalev with 3 low blows in a row. There were no low blows in the final sequence in the Johnson vs. Stevens fight, but it was still very quick stoppage in a fight that arguably should have been allowed to continue. I personally still see Johnson as undefeated, because he dominated Stevens and wasn’t badly hurt in the 10th round of that fight.

Tureano has won his last 6 fights since his loss to Stevens. Johnson suffered a shoulder injury in 2015 that kept him out of the ring for all of 2016. Tureano came back from the injury and defeated Fabriano Pena by a 2nd round knockout victory on March 23 of this year. It was a good win for Johnson against a tune-up level opponent. It would have been nice to see Tureano fight a couple of more tune-up fights to get the rust out from having been out of the ring for over a year, but he can’t afford to waste his career on tune-ups.

“This is a very important fight for me,” said Derevyanchenko. “A victory in this fight brings me closer to my dream of becoming a world champion. I’m training hard for this challenge and I know that Johnson will be prepared. I’m going to show that I’m ready for anybody in the middleweight division.”

Derevyanchenko, 31, fought for Ukraine in the 2008 Olympics, but he was eliminated in his second fight by Emilio Correa Jr. (Cuba) by an 18-4 score. As a pro, Derevyanchenko has been matched up against mostly weak opposition since making his pro debut in 2014. Derevyanchenko recently defeated gimpy-kneed Sam Soliman by a 2nd round stoppage. Soliman had knee problems during that fight, and he probably wouldn’t have beaten anyone on that night. Derevyanchenko also has wins over Vladine Biosse, Elvin Ayala, Jessie Nicklow and Kemahl Russell.

Derevyanchenko has heavy hands, but he’s slow and easy to hit. He’s not as powerful as Gennady Golovkin, and he lacks the speed of guys like Saul Canelo Alvarez, Danny Jacobs and Jermall Charlo. Derevyanchenko will have a hard time once he gets to the level of facing those guys. As we saw in the Olympics, Derevyanchenko has problems with opponents with fast hands, and he can definitely be out-boxed by clever fighters. But if you stand in front of Derevyanchenko, he can wear you down with his heavy hands.

”I expect a great fight, but he is my way toward the championship, so I will defeat him,” said Johnson.

If Johnson fights like he did in beating Eamonn O’Kane in October 2015, Derevyanchenko is not going to have much of a chance. Johnson dominated O’Kane in dropping him twice in the 1st round. It’s surprising that O’Kane even made it out of round 1, because he was taking really bad punishment from Johnson. However, in the second half of the fight, O’Kane was able to come back a little and get into the fight, even though he still ended up losing by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision.

Derevyanchenko will have great difficulties if Johnson chooses to jump on him early and bombard him with shots. Johnson is a 2008 Olympian as well, and he further than Derevyanchenko in getting to his third fight before losing to Hinati Silamu of China by the score 14-4. The scoring of that fight was way off from what I had. I thought that Johnson had done enough to win the fight, but the judges weren’t giving him credit for a lot of shots he was landing. By the way, the 2008 Olympics took place in Beijing, China. Amateur scoring of fights has a long ways to go before it gives an accurate picture of who the better fighters are.

Derevyanchenko is going to need to speed up his punches to keep Johnson off of him. Derevyanchenko looked glacially slow in his win over Russell last March. If that had been Tureano in the ring with Derevyanchenko, he likely would have knocked him out. Derevyanchenko has got to develop an outside game so that he doesn’t get out-boxed by the quicker fighters that he meets up with during the course of his pro career. Tureano isn’t blazing fast by any means, but he’s definitely faster than Derevyanchenko and he hits just as hard.