Rigondeaux vs Agbeko this 7 November in Atlantic City

This Saturday night, WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (12-0, 8 KO’s) will be defending his title against former IBF bantamweight champion Joseph Agbeko (29-4, 22 KO’s) on HBO from the Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA. Rigondeaux, 33, hasn’t fought since dominating Nonito Donaire in winning an easy 12 round unanimous decision last April in New York.


This isn’t the big fight that Rigondeaux wanted after he beat Donaire. Rigondeaux wanted a big fight, but instead he’s got to settle for for Agbeko, who has lost 3 out of his last 5 fights. When casual fans think of Agebeko, they remember his exciting fights against Abner Mares, Yonnhy Perez and Vic Darcinyan. But what they don’t remember was that he was beaten twice by Mares, beaten by Perez and almost beaten by Darchyinyan.

Rigondeaux has been waiting all this time for his promoters at Top Rank to find him a fight, as he wanted to fight Donaire again in a rematch to prove that his win wasn’t a fluke, but instead Donaire was matched against past his best 37-year-old Vic Darchinyan last month.

The fight turned out to be a lot harder than many boxing fans expected, which has some wondering whether Rigondeaux took away Donaire’s confidence and ruined him as a fighter by beating him so badly. Rigondeaux is interested in fighting Donaire again, but only at super bantamweight. He’s not going to move up to featherweight and fight a much heavier Donaire. As it is, Rigondeaux fought a heavier Donaire last April and still easily beat him. 

Rigondeaux says the one way he will fight Donaire is if he wins a title at featherweight. Rigondeaux will then move up and face him.

Rigondeaux will easily beat Agbeko on Saturday. I know there are some fans that think that Agbeko will win, but as soon round one starts, they’ll realize what a big mistake they made in thinking Agbeko could beat Rigondeaux. The fact of the matter is he can’t win this fight. Agbeko is no longer in his prime, he’s taken a lot of punishment in many of his recent fights, and he’s facing a much superior fighter in Rigondeaux.

On the undercard of the Rigondeaux-Agbeko fight will be light middleweight James Kirkland (31-1, 27 KO’s) fighting for the first time in a year and a half against Glen Tapia (20-0, 12 KO’s) in a 10 round fight that could go either way.

An active Kirkland would destroy Tapia, but a rusty Kirkland could lose to him.
Also on the card is former middleweight world title challenger Matthew Macklin (29-5, 20 KO’s) trying to turn his sagging career around against Lamar Russ (14-0, 7 KO’s) in a 10 round bout. Macklin was stopped in the 3rd round in his last fight by WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin last June.

Middleweight Matt Karobov (21-0, 12 KO’s) fights Derek Edwards (26-2-1, 13 KO’s) in an 8 round fight. Karobov has been brought along very slowly for the past 5 years, and it’s time that they start putting him in with better opposition so that he doesn’t spend the best part of his career against weak opponents.