The Weekend Bulletin

A quick snapshot at the weekend that was.

Biggest Upset: Elin Cederroos +475 over Alicia Napoleon Espinosa

• WBA World Female Super Middleweight Championship: Elin Cederroos
• WBA World Female Junior Middleweight Championship: Claressa Shields
• WBC World Female Junior Middleweight Championship: Claressa Shields
• Fight To Win Masters Light Heavyweight Championship: Radji Bryson-Barrett
• Fight To Win Black Belt Women’s Flyweight Championship: Karen Antunues
• WBO NABO Super Middleweight Championship: Steven Nelson
• WBC World Female Super Middleweight Championship: Alejandra Jimenez
• WBO World Female Super Middleweight Championship: Alejandra Jimenez

A Few Storylines Going Forward:

1. Women’s Super Middleweight?? Women’s Super Middleweight!!: After this weekend, the female boxing super middleweight division went from something nobody knew about, only that Claressa Shields fought at, to now has a ready-made superfight! As happenstance would have it, there were two 168lb title-fights this weekend on major platforms, and now we have Elin Cederroos, pulling off the biggest upset of the weekend, adding the WBA to her IBF titles, and Alejandra Jimenez winning the WBC and WBO titles from Franchon Crews Dezurn in yet another upset. Now 168 for women has more buzz than ever before, and somehow has a deep field that numerous matches and rematches can be made from.
2. When Keeping it Real Goes Wrong: Jesse Hart was primed. By the thinnest of hairs, lost his second bid for Gilberto Ramirez’s WBO Super Middleweight championship, this time by majority decision, but aside from Ramirez, he hadn’t lost to a single other fighter. In his last bout, he waxed Sullivan Barrera, who had dominated Joe Smith Jr., the man who retired and humiliated his mentor and idol, Bernard Hopkins. Hart was a big favorite and ready to exact revenge. He ended up getting into an ugly slugfest, in which his defense, Hopkins’s specialty, was so poor, Smith was barely looking at his target and still landing. To add insult to injury, one judge scored it for Hart and was immediately mocked by the media and Bob Arum. Just more humiliation.
3. New Year, New Me: World champions Jaime Munguia and Claressa Shields started off the new year in new weight classes. For the young Munguia, it’s moving up after five defenses of his junior middleweight world championship and to accomodate his 23-year old frame easier. For Shields, she’s moving down to junior middleweight to move towards deeper, more talented, more acclaimed women’s divisions.