December 17 at the arena Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas (Las Vegas, USA) in the main event of the show from RVS Al Haymon and Showtime channel the top lightweight prospects will converge – American Frank Martin (16-0, 12 KOs) and Dominican Michel Rivera (24-0, 14 KOs).
As part of the live broadcast, two more matches will be shown. Both with the participation of Russians, both qualifying (semi-finals) according to IBF:
– in the super-middleweight limit, Vladimir Shishkin (13-0, 8 KOs) will fight with the ex-champion of the organization, Venezuelan Jose Uzcategui (32-4, 27 KOs), who was caught doping in October last year;
– in the bantamweight limit, Nikolay Potapov (23-2-1, 11 KOs) will compete with Filipino Vincent Astrolabio (17-3, 12 KOs), known for his victory over the legendary Guillermo Rigondeaux from Cuba.
In March, in response to Russia’s criminal invasion of independent Ukraine, the WBC, IBF and WBO refused to sanction fights involving Russians. Unlike the WBC, which decided to remove boxers from the Russian Federation and Belarus from the ratings (that’s what happened), the IBF, apparently, quickly forgot about their promise. We hope that the Ukrainian boxing legend will help to remember him.