AFTER an excellent recent offering in Birmingham, Matchroom return this Saturday night at Manchester’s AO Arena. The vast majority of the card offers plenty of intrigue. Eddie Hearn says it’s a really good card. Overall, I tend to agree with that statement.
Jack Catterall gets an opportunity to rebound from his defeat to Arnold Barboza Jr. in February, when he faces Harlem Eubank in a domestic welterweight showdown that could make or break a career. It is, in truth, a perfect piece of matchmaking.
It might not offer enough entertainment for some, but it will likely be absorbing enough to satisfy most. Catterall is a worthy betting favourite, but Eubank could be in the right place at the right time. Picking a winner is difficult. Exactly what a main event should be.
Joe Cordina returns to the Matchroom family in a dangerous, at least on paper, looking fight against the once-beaten Jaret Gonzalez Quiroz. A fight with the apparently big-punching Mexican appears to offer much jeopardy for the boxer in the ‘home’ corner.
Cordina makes his return, following a spell in the boxing wilderness, having lost his world super-featherweight title to Anthony Cacace last May. It might be famous last words, but Quiroz, despite his impressive-looking 17-1 resume, hasn’t beaten anyone of note. I doubt that statistic changes in Manchester.
Aqib Fiaz and Alex Murphy clash in a good battle of Lancashire lightweights. The cruiserweight prospect Pat Brown continues his professional apprenticeship against Lewis Oakford, and Will Crolla fights Fraser Wilkinson in another fight that offers Crolla a decent little step-up in opposition.
After six hard rounds in his last fight, Crolla will be looking to make a real statement against Wilkinson. The much-hyped, heavyweight, hopeful Leo Atang makes his professional debut on the undercard. While the card on Saturday night offers enough depth to satisfy even the harshest of critics, the one disappointment is perhaps the choice of opponent for the returning Skye Nicolson.
Admittedly, Nicolson is coming off a defeat to Tiara Brown, a fight that cost Nicolson her unbeaten record and her WBC world featherweight title. If you also add to the equation that the Australian is making her embryonic move down to super-bantamweight, you’d expect Nicolson to be fighting a lesser opponent in her ‘comeback’ fight. But it might be a case of playing it a little too safe in fighting Carla Camila Campos Gonzales.
The Bolivian, if Boxrec is to be believed, has a decent enough record of 9-3, but closer inspection tells an entirely different story. Gonzales has eight stoppages in her nine professional victories, but all of her wins have come against fighters who haven’t won a single fight in their professional careers.
Her last three opponents had a combined record of 0-5 when they fought Gonzales. Neither opponent has fought since losing to the Bolivian. Last year, in a 10-round contest, Gonzales lost every round to the former world super-flyweight challenger Linn Sandström.
Gonzales has two victories over one Sofia Wells Raldes, wins that were three years apart; the second victory came in 2024. Raldes is 0-3 as a professional. Four of those wins for Gonzales have come against fighters making their professional debuts. According to Boxrec, neither of those four fighters has fought again.
The Bolivian lost to Mariela Ribera Valverde on her professional debut in 2018, and there was a fourth-round stoppage to the unbeaten Jeyssa Marcel in 2023. Gonzales weighed just over 116 pounds for that fight. She has mostly fought even lower than that.
Only recently has Gonzales moved up to somewhere near the super-bantamweight limit. The fight with Nicolson is contracted for 124 pounds. In many ways, that 9-3 record is somewhat flattering, to say the least.
Even if you give Nicolson and her team the benefit of doubt for wanting a ‘soft’ return after her defeat to Brown in March, and allowing her body to settle into a lighter weight division, Gonzales appears to be a little too soft an option.
With the greatest of respect to the Bolivian, going from fighting Raven Chapman and Tiara Brown to fighting Carla Camila Campos Gonzales, is airing far too much on the side of caution for Skye. It’s extremely difficult to know what Nicolson will learn from fighting Gonzales; she will likely have had harder spars in the lead-up to the fight.
The Australian is likely to win every second of every round before eventually stopping the Bolivian at some point of their scheduled eight-round contest.
Nicolson has admittedly talked about staying active and taking smaller fights lower down the card, but surely there has to be at least some point to those fights. Nicolson appears to be several levels above Carla Camila Campos Gonzales.
Maybe even more than that. For context, Nicolson is around 1/100 to win. There is that remote possibility that it might be at least somewhat competitive. But those odds suggest that we will see a gross mismatch.
The Australian is perhaps the great enigma of women’s boxing. Some might be turned off by her safety-first style, but even if you are not entertained by her style of fighting, you can still appreciate it. Until she ran into Tiara Brown, it had been incredibly effective.
The likelihood is that Nicolson will find success at her new weight, although how much she finds might depend on Ellie Scotney. If Scotney eventually moves up to featherweight, Nicolson will surely be manoeuvred into a fight for any world titles that become vacant if and when Scotney decides to chase titles at a second weight.
If Scotney decides to stay at super-bantamweight for the immediate future, Nicolson might find her success a little more limited. At least in the short term.
Skye Nicolson is a talented fighter and a much better one than she is given credit for, probably an underappreciated one also, and she does get a thoroughly undeserved bad press at times. A move down in weight might be exactly what she needs to reignite a career that was halted in its tracks in her homeland over three months ago.
Despite that upset loss to Brown, I would have favoured her to get that win back in a second fight with the American. But Brown has moved on without her, and Nicolson has somewhat reluctantly done the same. The move down in weight might be of great benefit to the elusive southpaw.
I always feel Nicolson has a few more gears to go through. With the confidence of fighting smaller fighters, Nicolson might allow herself to show us a little more. Hopefully, we’ll get those gears on Saturday night. In truth, we should.
There were certain limitations exposed in March. The constant pressure of Brown was a little too much for the Australian at times. But that can be fixed, especially at a lower weight. I thought Nicolson showed a side of her that we haven’t previously seen in the fight with Brown.
With the fight apparently slipping away from her, Nicolson bit down on her gumshield in the closing rounds, and she very nearly saved her night. It will be interesting to see what changes, if any, we see at her new weight. At 29, I still feel Nicolson can get better. One defeat shouldn’t define her. It could even make her.
I don’t like the first fight in her new chapter, but Nicolson should be able to replicate her success at featherweight in her new weight division. I do think Scotney is an extremely difficult fight for her, and it is a fight I would still very much like to see.
I’d strongly favour the current unified world super-bantamweight champion, but Nicolson isn’t without hope if the two do eventually meet somewhere down the line. But something tells me we will never see it.
But Scotney aside, a world title at a second weight is more than possible for Skye Nicolson. Hopefully, we get to see her in far more meaningful fights than we look like getting on Saturday night, as she builds up to another run at that second world title.
