WB World lightweight champion Jorge Linares (42-3, 27 KOs) weighed in at 134.2 pounds on Friday for his title defense on Saturday night against his #1 WBA mandatory Luke Campbell (17-1, 14 KOs) at The Forum in Inglewood, California. Campbell weighed in at 134.8 lbs.
The co-feature bout on the Linares-Campbell card between light welterweights Antonio Orozco and Roberto Ortiz has been scrapped due to both fighters coming in over the 140-lb. limit, according to Fight News. Orozco was 7 lbs. over the weight limit for the light welterweight division, whereas Ortiz came in over 2.5 lbs. It’s rare when both fighters come in over the weight limit by such a high amount. It’s not that big of a loss for the boxing fans that will be tuning in on Saturday night on HBO to see the Linares-Campbell card. The fans mainly want to see Linares. Campbell is an unknown, and just a contender. He’s known by the hardcore boxing fans, and of course his fans in the UK.
The start time for the Linares-Campbell card is at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on Saturday night on HBO. Linares vs. Campbell will also be televised in the UK on Sky Sports Action.
Campbell, 29, has lost once during his 4-year pro career against Yvan Mendy in losing a 12-round split decision on December 12, 2015. Campbell won a gold medal for Britain in the 2012 Olympics, but a lot of boxing fans thought that he should have lost several fights during that event. The Olympics that year took place in London.
“I’ve never been much of a talker,” Campbell told Sky Sports News. “I always like my actions to speak louder than my words and I don’t want to speak about the fight anymore. I don’t want to speak about what I’m going to do or anything like that, I just want everyone to tune in on Saturday night and see the outcome.”
It doesn’t matter if Campbell speaks or not. He’s still going to be the underdog whether he talks or not. Linares is viewed by the boxing public as the more talented fighter of the two. Campbell is just a guy that will be inside the ring with Linares, the star of the night. The fans will see whether Campbell has the talent or not. We already saw Campbell lose his fight with Mendy.
”It’s a challenge I am really up for and it is a challenge I believe I can overcome on Saturday night,” said Campbell.
The opposition that Campbell has faced haven’t been good enough to tell us much about how good he is. He’s faced one good opponent during his 4-year pro career in his fight with Mendy, and he lost to him.
Here are the fighters that Campbell has been beating lately:
• Darleys Perez
• Jairo Lopez
• Derry Mathews
• Argenis Mendez
• Gary Sykes
• Yvan Mendy – loss
• Tommy Coyle
• Aboubeker Bechelaghem
• Daniel Eduardo Brizuela
Those are largely domestic and European level opposition instead of the talented guys that we’ve seen Linares fighting. That’s what I mean about Campbell being unproven. There’s nothing there on his resume that suggests that he’s going to be able to rise to the task to beat Linares on Saturday night. There’s certainly a lot of fluff opposition that the southpaw Campbell has been fighting, but that’s how it goes in boxing. You can argue that Campbell is getting the title shot against Linares due to him being signed with Eddie Hearn and his 2012 Olympic gold medal credentials, which will get you in the door for a world title fight, but you’ve still got to win it. This fight isn’t taking place in the UK.
Linares will be fighting in front of a friendly boxing crowd for a change after fighting 3 out of his last 4 fights in front of hostile crowds in the UK in his fights against Anthony Crolla (x 2) and Kevin Mitchell. In both cases, Linares had to fight those guys and beat them in a dominant fashion not to be on the receiving end of a controversial decision. Linares stopped Mitchell in the 10h round on May 30, 2015. While Mitchell insists that he lost the fight due to a bad cut over his left eye, it’s more of a case of Linares having way too much talent for him. The cut wasn’t the reason why Linares kept clobbering Mitchell with straight shots down the middle each time he would come forward trying to land his wild left hooks. It was boxing skills that won the fight. Mitchell and his fans seem to be in denial about the true reason why Linares won.
Linares came back to the UK to defeat Anthony Crolla by a pair of 12 round unanimous decisions in September last year and then in March of this year in his own hometown in Manchester.
“It is the best moment in my life. I am very happy. I am feeling very good and ready for this fight,” said Campbell.
Campbell, 5’9”, has the size advantage over the 5’8” Linares and the youth advantage. Linares appears to be more than 1 inch shorter than Campbell when the 2 of them have stood next to each other. But the stork-like Campbell still struggles even against shorter guys. He’s easy to hit, and he goes down when he’s nailed on the button, as he was in his fights against Mendy and Argenis Mendez. Linares is a little older at 32 than Campbell, but that’s no real advantage. 32 isn’t old for a fighter in the lightweight division. It might be old in the lighter weight classes, but not at lightweight.
“When I had him hurt, I usually get the job done quickly, but he had great movement and ring craft. He knew how to get himself out of that moment when he was hurt,” said Mitchell to skysports.com about his fight with Linares.
I’m not sure what Mitchell is talking about when saying he had Linares hurt. He never hurt him during their fight. Mitchell did knock Linares down in round 5 with an elbow smash to the head. Linares wasn’t hurt. It was more of a flash knockdown. It was interesting that the referee Victor Loughlin gave Mitchell credit for the knockdown even though it was a clear elbow. In real time, it was obvious that Mitchell and dropped Linares with an elbow. It looked an MMA move. You could see pure elbow being thrown and landed. I’m not sure which direction the referee was looking at when Mitchell threw the elbow, but he couldn’t have been watching the action for him to miss such a blatant elbow from Mitchell. In slow motion, you could see Mitchell wind up and nail Linares clean in the face with a pure elbow. Shockingly, the knockdown was allowed to stand.
Campbell usually keeps it clean, so I doubt we’ll see any fouling from him tomorrow night. Campbell is going to need to keep his guard up for this fight, because he goes down easily when he’s hit cleanly. Linares has the hand speed advantage. They’re both about even when it comes to punching power. The boxing ability is on Linares’ side by a wide margin. Campbell is more of a guy that gets over by being tall for the lightweight division, and his southpaw stance helps him out. Without his size, I think Campbell would just be an average run of the mill fighter, with a chin problem and a southpaw stance.
Prediction
I see Linares knocking Campbell out by the 7tth round after softening him up with speedy combinations. By round 7, Campbell will be ready to be knocked out. I think Linares will catch Campbell with a big shot and plant him on the canvas for the 10- count. Campbell won’t have his British boxing fans at The Forum on Saturday night to support him in high enough numbers for them to be heard. Some of Campbell’s loyal boxing fans will of course follow him over to the U.S., but not in high enough numbers for it to help him.