The Premier Boxing Champions presents a Featherweight World Championship main event when Gary Russell Jr. puts his WBC title up against undefeated Filipino challenger Mark Magsayo at the Borgata Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey on January 22, and the co-main event is a rematch between Subriel Matias and Petros Ananyan.
Gary Russell Jr. is considered one of the best American champions in boxing and is widely regarded as having the fastest hands in the sport.
Russell, 33, has an impressive record of 31 wins, 1 loss and 18 by way of knockout and his lone defeat comes at the hands of the great Vasyl Lomachenko. Russell has been chasing a rematch against the Ukrainian star to try to clear the lone blemish of his career.
One of the criticisms of Russell is his inactivity and he mostly fights once a year and other top fighters will fight 3 times a year if they are not badly damaged in a fight.
On January 22 he will take on a very dangerous young opponent who is hungry for the world title and has a country behind his back in Mark Magsayo.
Magsayo, 26, has a record of 23 wins, 0 losses and 16 by way of knockout. He trains out of the legendary Wild Card boxing club in Hollywood, California under the guidance of Freddie Roach who is best known as the long time trainer of Manny Pacquiao.
In the prefight media scrum, Russell claims he has an injury heading into the fight but doesn’t want to divulge the injury until after the fight.
Freddie Roach who trains Magsayo isn’t too concerned about the injury and wants his pupil to take Russell seriously as if he was 100 percent and not to take him lightly because it could be a mental tactic to try to get Magsayo overconfident which could play into Russell’s hands.
The co-main event is a rematch between Puerto Rican knockout artist Subriel Matias and Russian Petros Ananyan.
Matias was the heavy favorite heading into the February 2020 first meeting with Ananyan, but that changed when the then undefeated power puncher had difficulty trying to knockout the elusive Russian underdog. Matias would suffer his first career defeat and now Ananyan wants to make sure the first bout was no fluke while Matias wants to prove he wasn’t at his best and get a dominant KO finish.
Watch Gary Russell Jr vs. Mark Magsayo WBC featherweight championship live on Saturday, January 22, 2022 at 9:00 PM ET/6:00 PM PT on SHOWTIME Championship Boxing.
