We're going to have a big three-card weekend here at Bad Left Hook starting on Friday, June 6, with ESPN2's Friday Night Fights showcasing a solid main event between junior welterweights Herman Ngoudjo (16-2, 9 KO) and Souleymane M'baye (36-2-1, 21 KO). Ngoudjo's record is nothing special on paper, but he was at his absolute best in January against Paulie Malignaggi, a really tight unanimous decision win for Paulie in a bout that I thought Ngoudjo did enough to win. Regardless, it was (like his fight with Jose Luis Castillo, his other loss) a very close one to call. M'baye lost the WBA title last July in an upset to Gavin Rees. Both guys are looking to get back into a title mix. Plus, the fight takes place in Montreal, a city that boasts some of the best boxing fans on the planet.
Saturday has Pavlik-Lockett and Ponce de Leon-Lopez on HBO, of course, and Showtime counters with Forrest-Mora and Quintana-Williams II. Here's a two-minute refresher from the first Quintana-Williams scrap in February, courtesey of HBO:
Forrest-Mora is not something I'm terribly interested in and I will not watch it live. My plan is to catch the Quintana-Williams rematch at 9, then go over to HBO at 10:05. We'll have much more on those two cards this week.
After a fairly quiet May, it's good to see the schedule filling up again. May did have some nice stuff, to be fair. Tim Bradley's win over Junior Witter was a legit shocker, and we got to see Oscar de la Hoya and Ricky Hatton back in the ring, although they were both infomercial fights.