Malawi\u2019s boxing icon, Isaac \u2018Golden Boy\u2019 Chilemba, has challenged Dmitry Bivol for the World Boxing Association (WBA) belt and the two could meet on August 4.<\/p>\n
According to Boxing News 24, if the fight gets made, it will be the co-feature bout on the Sergey \u2018Krusher\u2019 Kovalev vs Eleider Alvarez card at Hard Rock Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA<\/p>\n
Bivol (13-0, 11 KOs) fought on the undercard of Kovalev\u2019s last fight against Igor Mikhalkin on March 3 at Madison Square Garden in New York and easily beat Sullivan Barrera.<\/p>\n
\u201cChilemba is one of the possible opponents for Bivol. We will know for sure in the next couple of days,\u201d Bivol\u2019s manager, Vadim Kornilov, said to ESPN.com.<\/p>\n
A report on Boxing News 24 questions why Bivol is fighting Chilemba (25-5-2, 10 KOs), rather than one of the top contenders such as Anthony Yarde, Marcus Browne, Joe Smith Jnr or Badou Jack, as he is considered the best fighter in the division.<\/p>\n
\u201cChilemba is not what boxing fans were hoping to see the 27-year-old Bivol fight next. Chilemba is ranked #12 with the World Boxing Association, and he has lost three of his last four fights since 2015. Granted, Chilemba\u2019s losses have come against good fighters in Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Sergey Kovalev and Eleider Alvarez.<\/p>\n
\u201cChilemba\u2019s performances seem to be getting worse with each fight. Against Gvozdyk in November 2016, Chilemba was dominated in the entire fight and eventually had to quit in the 8th round due to a broken hand. In Chilemba\u2019s last fight, he barely squeaked by former light heavyweight world title challenger Blake Caparello (26-3-1, 10 KOs) in defeating him by a 12-round unanimous decision last Marc by the scores 117-111, 115-113 and 115-113,\u201d reads the report.<\/p>\n
This will be Bivol\u2019s third defence of his WBA 175lb title that he won outside of the ring in 2017. In Bivol\u2019s prior two defences, he stopped fringe contender Trent Broadhurst in the first round last November and then beat Sullivan Barrera by a 12th round knockout last March.<\/p>\n
Chilemba\u2019s best wins of his 13-year professional career came against Caparello, Vasily Lepikhin, Denis Grachev, Edison Miranda, Doudou Ngumbo and Maksim Vlasov.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Malawi\u2019s boxing icon, Isaac \u2018Golden Boy\u2019 Chilemba, has challenged Dmitry Bivol for the World Boxing Association (WBA) belt and the two could meet on August 4. According to Boxing News 24, if the fight gets made, it will be the co-feature bout on the Sergey \u2018Krusher\u2019 Kovalev vs Eleider Alvarez card at Hard Rock Hotel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12604,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66144"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66148,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66144\/revisions\/66148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}