Premier Boxing Champions is hitting 2017 running, having already booked cards that range from terrific (Santa Cruz-Frampton II/Zlaticanin-Garcia on January 28th) to horrific (Erislandy Lara vs. Yuri Foreman on January 13th). Their latest announcement, promoted by Adrien Broner’s "About Billions" and set to take place February 10th on Bounce, is somewhere in between.
The main event pits IBF Lightweight Champion Robert Easter Jr. against IBF #15 and BoxRec #177 Luis Cruz. This fight is terrible; Cruz (22-4-1, 16 KO) lost to a 7-13-3 fighter four fights ago, got knocked out by Edner Cherry three fights ago, won a six-round decision over a 13-15-3 fighter two fights ago, and drew with Ivan Redkach one fight ago. He should not be fighting for a title.
What makes this worse is that Easter (18-0, 14 KO) has been consistently testing himself lately, taking on the very skilled Argenis Mendez and Richard Commey in his last two fights. Hell, that 13-15-3 guy I mentioned? Easter knocked him out in 82 seconds in 2014.
The co-feature is, surprisingly enough, pretty darn good: Rau’shee Warren (14-1, 4 KO) will make the first defense of his two bantamweight belts against interim WBA champ Zhanat Zakhiyanov (26-1, 18 KO). Zhakiyanov had won twelve straight by knockout before taking a split decision over Yonfrez Parejo two Novembers ago.
I guess if the main event is the price we have to pay for Badou Jack vs. James DeGale, Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia, and other decent PBC fights, I can live with it.