December 9, 2021
Boxing News

Russell-Magsayo collide in January

WBC featherweight champion Gary Russell Jr. (31-1, 18 KOs) returns for the first time in nearly two years to make his mandatory defense against Mark Magsayo in a Showtime Championship Boxing main event on January 22 at a location to be determined. The rarely seen Russell has defended his WBC belt just five times since he dethroned Jhonny González in March 2015. Magsayo (23-0, 16 KOs), who is trained by Freddie Roach, is the number two contender for the WBC and is coming off a spectacular knockout of former champ Julio Ceja.

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    • I’m thinking he runs right over Magsayo in like 5-6 rounds. If he does, is there A CHANCE than Russell fights twice in a calendar year for the first time since 2014???

      • That’s a crazy statistic. Pretty much like the Dempsey days when they could sit on the title for years with no deadline to make a defense. Wonder if Russell will fight his 40th fight before Halley’s Comet comes around again? Too bad. The guy’s a good fighter.

        • I just looked it up, he’s the 5th longest reigning featherweight champion of all time. He’s about 5 months behind #4 who is Eusebio Pedroza, so if he beats Magsayo and doesn’t vacate, he will be #4. Pedroza had 19 defenses, Russell’s next will be his 6th. Incidentally, the longest reigning fw champion was Johnny Kilbane, who was champ for over 11 years and only had four defenses.

          • @Lucie Interesting. I looked Kilbane up, and he fought at the same time Dempsey did. Kilbane was actually quite active, fighting 10 times in 1919, and I believe 7 times in 1920, which was probably around the time he was champion, though it’shard to tell from his Boxrec page.

            I took a quick look out of curiosity as to when deadlines for Champions to fight their mandatories became a thing, but was unable to find anything. Any clue when that started, and which organization came up with that?

          • I saw that stat on Kilbane and just automatically assumed he had Dempsey-like inactivity, but what I forgot about was the fact that, back in those days, some of those guys fought non-title fights all the time. Apparently he was one of those guys and just so happened to only actually defend his title that many times.

            I don’t know exactly when official rankings/mandatory challengers became a thing. I would presume it came in with the WBA and WBC in the 60’s, but it would be a very interesting thing to do research on. If I find anything accurate, I’ll let you know somewhere around here.

  • Gary Russell must work another full-time job and defends his title when he builds up vacation hours to use up.

  • Russell Jr. has been taunting Tank Davis, who is a lightweight. I wolud love to see him against Shakur Stevenson or at least Valdez, both jr. lightweight, furthermore a more feasible fights to make. Just a dream though, because he is in a serious competition against Keith Thurman.

    • PBC connections keeps the belt on him. But he was also scheduled a few times to defend against Rey Vargas but Rey got hurt then got COVID I think then dropped the fight to fight some tuneups leaving Russell without a partner. Shame it seems like inactivity plagues a lot of the PBC fighters

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