Despite the postponement of Arthur Abraham-Andre Dirrell, Showtime will be keeping boxing on the airwaves on March 6, bumping Vic Darchinyan into the main event of what is now a "special" ShoBox card.
Darchinyan (33-2-1, 27 KO) will defend the WBC and WBA junior bantamweight titles against Rodrigo Guerrero (13-1-1, 9 KO), a fringe contender at best who has fought in a 12-round contest just once in his career, beating Juan Alberto Rosas by split decision in 2008. His best win came against Luis Maldonado (UD-8) last year. Darchinyan beat Maldonado back in 2006, and before fighting Guerrero, the Mexican had been stopped in back-to-back fights against Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel.
So to say Guerrero is a bit of an unfit challenger on paper is probably an understatement. On paper, he doesn't belong in the ring with Darchinyan. It wasn't even a good co-feature, and it's a terrible main event.
Now in the co-feature, Australian Leonardo Zappavigna (22-0, 15 KO) will meet Fernando Angulo (22-6, 14 KO). Angulo generally makes for exciting fights, and Zappavigna is essentially an unknown commodity, fighting for the second time on American soil. He made his U.S. debut in December, beating Sergio Macias, who came in with a record of 14-18-1. Angulo has lost two in a row to Anges Adjaho and Ameth Diaz.
Zappavigna is described in the press release as having a long rat-tail a la Kostya Tszyu, and his idol is Arturo Gatti, so we could see some real fireworks to lead off the night. He was a four-time national champion in Australia and went 72-9 as an amateur.
The show will start at 9pm ET, with HBO's Devon Alexander-Juan Urango fight starting at 9:30. I don't think anyone will have much trouble picking which fight to watch, but it's pretty honorable of Showtime to keep these four guys working and get them a payday. They had nothing to do with the postponement of Abraham-Dirrell, and they're not being punished for Dirrell hurting his back.