{"id":199330,"date":"2025-06-20T07:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T07:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199330\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T07:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T07:59:10","slug":"bakhram-murtazaliev-vs-josh-kelly-eyed-for-canelo-vs-crawford-undercard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/199330\/","title":{"rendered":"Bakhram Murtazaliev vs Josh Kelly eyed for Canelo vs Crawford undercard"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adam Booth, trainer of IBF no. 3 super welterweight Josh Kelly, recently told Sky Sports<\/a> that he\u2019d had \u201ca couple of conversations\u201d with promoter Kathy Duva about pitting Kelly against reigning champion Bakhram Murtazaliev. Now, Lance Pugmire reports<\/a> that the bout could join Canelo Alvarez\u2019s September 13th clash with Terence Crawford in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not entirely clear on how the IBF could get behind this; Murtazaliev (23-0, 17 KO) is on the clock to make a mandatory defense by October 19th, the one-year anniversary of his upset knockout of Tim Tszyu, and has a top contender in Erickson Lubin.<\/p>\n

It would be particularly egregious considering Kelly\u2019s (17-1-1, 9 KO) lack of qualifications. He\u2019s exclusively stuck around the domestic scene since getting thumped by David Avanesyan in 2021, his only win of note a razor-thin majority decision over late replacement Ishmael Davis<\/a> last September.<\/p>\n

Davis went on to get beaten to a pulp by Serhii Bohachuk, for reference.<\/p>\n

It just seems such a silly fight to make considering the number of actual killers lurking around the top of the division. Hopefully this is just an appetizer for a unification or a showdown with the rising \u201cBoots\u201d Ennis in the near future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adam Booth, trainer of IBF no. 3 super welterweight Josh Kelly, recently told Sky Sports that he\u2019d had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[10520,80719,1935,33857,39869,66412,3576,163,10522,80721,80722,10521,80720,79,16,66996,15,6691],"class_list":{"0":"post-199330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-bad","9":"tag-bakhram","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-canelo","12":"tag-crawford","13":"tag-eyed","14":"tag-for","15":"tag-front-page","16":"tag-hook","17":"tag-josh","18":"tag-kelly","19":"tag-left","20":"tag-murtazaliev","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-undercard","24":"tag-united-kingdom","25":"tag-vs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114714638243759991","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}