By Craig Daly: IBF gentle welterweight champion Subriel Matias will make his first protection of his title towards former champ Sergey Lipinets on August twenty sixth at a until to be decided venue on Showtime.
Lipinets is an attention-grabbing alternative for Matias, as he was destroyed by Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis in a sixth-round knockout in April 2021. Boots Ennis sliced by means of Lipinets like a sizzling knife by means of butter, knocking him down within the fourth & sixth rounds to attain a simple knockout.
It wasn’t even sporting, as Ennis fully destroyed Lipinets. Matias might do the identical to Lipinets if he fails to make use of motion to avoid the laborious puncher.
In Lipinets’ final struggle, he stopped the previous his finest, Omar Figueroa Jr within the eighth spherical final August. Whereas that was a good comeback with for Lipinets, it didn’t come towards a top-10-level contender at 140.
Lipinets briefly held the IBF 140-lb title after beating Akihiro Kondo in 2017. In his subsequent struggle in 2018, Lipinets misplaced his IBF title in a twelve spherical unanimous choice to Mikey Garcia. Lipinets did inflict lots of punishment on Mikey, swelling up his face badly.
On the finish of the struggle, Mikey regarded just like the loser going by appearances as a result of his face was bloody & swollen from the heavy photographs that Lipinets had hit him with all through the competition.
The number of the 34-year-old Lipinets (17-2-1, 13 KOs) by the administration of Matias (19-1, 19 KOs) foils the hopes of WBC 140-lb champion Regis Prograis of going through him subsequent in a unification struggle.
Matias’ administration may not have felt comfy placing him in with arguably the #1 fighter within the gentle welterweight division in Prograis as a result of we’ve seen the 31-year-old Puerto Rican fighter crushed by Petros Ananyan. That man is nowhere close to the extent of Prograis talent-wise.
You possibly can perceive completely why Matias’ administration would select to match him towards Lipinets moderately than Prograis as a result of he’s too susceptible on protection, and his punch resistance isn’t adequate for him to win. In different phrases, Matias can dish it out, however he can’t take punishment in return.
Matias captured the vacant IBF 140-lb title final February, stopping the beforehand unbeaten Jeremias Ponce within the fifth spherical in a struggle that originally was aggressive however acquired out of hand by the fourth spherical.
Lipinets has been preventing simply yearly for the final three years, which may’t be good for his abilities to maintain him sharp.
Mike Coppinger of ESPN is reporting the information of the Matias vs. Lipinets.
