1. Claressa Shields: The best female boxer in U.S. Olympic history is now a world champion, completely dominating formerly undefeated champion Nikki Adler. However, an even larger challenger looms, as middleweight superpower, and arguably best female boxer in the world, Christina Hammer called Shields out afterwards.
2. Adriano Moraes: Avenged his loss to Kairat Akhmetov for OneFC gold two years ago, and unified his interim title with Akhmetov’s title to be the undisputed OneFC Flyweight Champion.
3. Sergio Pettis: This may have been the turning point, where Pettis’s work may have finally caught up to his hype. He put in five rounds of heavy work in front of a raucous crowd and was an underdog against Brandon Moreno, but prevailed, and is a viable flyweight contender now.
4. Bibiano Fernandes: Retained his OneFC bantamweight strap with ease against a live contender in Andrew Leone.
5. Kevin Aguilar: Pitched a five-round shutout over up-and-coming challenger Justin Rader in the main event of LFA 18 to retain his featherweight championship and becoming a big player in the featherweight division outside of the big leagues.
6. Vasyl Lomachenko: Just toyed with Miguel Marriaga, but showed a worldwide ESPN audience just what he’s capable of. Plus, it was a bonus to us, the viewers.
7. Mohamed Mezouari: Handed Thongchai his second-consecutive TKO loss, and at only 21, but 170 pro fights on his card, it’ll be interesting to see if he can turn it around after dropping three of his last four.
8. Yohan Lidon: At Fight Night Saint Tropez 5, Lidon defended his WKN World Super Middleweight title with a championship-round head kick over Florian Kroger.
9. Joao Assis: Defended his Fight To Win Heavyweight title against Tom Deblass, in which I’d call a small upset.
10. Mauricio Herrera: In a battle of two absolutely hard-nosed, absolutely crusty veterans, Herrera barely edged Jesus Soto Karass to take the main event of ESPN’s Friday Golden Boy card.
11. Humbert Bandenay: The late-notice fill-in was the biggest underdog on the card, and made a name for himself in a huge way, putting Martin Bravo to sleep with a knee and will hopefully improve on his 62 Twitter followers as of current writing.
12. Raymundo Beltran: It was a weekend of crusty boxing veterans, and the Top Rank co-main on ESPN as no different, with Beltran has three secondary lightweight titles and is due for his forth chance at world lightweight gold.
13. Niko Price: Absolutely wiped Alan Jouban, weird stoppage aside, and that’s how you put your name on the map, even if you acted like a complete chode after you won.
14. Dustin Ortiz: Just fifteen seconds and Ortiz had himself a KO win over Hector Sandoval in front of a stunned Mexican crowd.
15. Alexa Grasso: Climbed her way out of a deep hole early against Randa Markos to grind out a late-round advantage and a split-decision victory in the co-main of UFC Mexico.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
