Jorge Linares didn’t look like a 38-year-old fighter who has lost three straight fights when he stepped on the scale Friday afternoon in Liverpool, England.
The former three-division champion appeared to have had every bit the tremendous training camp he claimed a day earlier when he weighed in exactly at the junior welterweight limit of 140 pounds for his fight against Jack Catterall on Saturday night. Catterall came in at 140 pounds as well for their 12-round main event at Echo Arena in Liverpool.
Catterall (27-1, 13 KOs) is listed by most sportsbooks as at least a 9-1 favorite to defeat Linares in a bout DAZN will stream worldwide. If the 30-year-old southpaw wins, he is a potential opponent for the winner of the 12-round, 140-pound championship bout between WBC super lightweight champ Regis Prograis and undefeated, undisputed lightweight champ Devin Haney on December 9 at Chase Center in San Francisco.
Chorley’s Catterall will fight for just the second time since his controversial split-decision defeat to Scottish southpaw Josh Taylor in February 2022. Taylor (19-1, 13 KOs), who was the unbeaten, fully unified 140-pound champion at that time, nicked Catterall on two scorecards, but lost on the other card at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow.
Their rematch was postponed twice and eventually canceled because the WBO ordered Taylor to make a mandatory defense of its junior welterweight title against Teofimo Lopez (19-1, 13 KOs). Brooklyn’s Lopez upset Taylor by unanimous decision in their 12-rounder June 10 in The Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Catterall defeated Darragh Foley by unanimous decision in his only action since Taylor beat him. He knocked Australia’s Foley (22-5-1, 10 KOs) to the canvas twice, once in the seventh round and again in the ninth round, on May 27 at AO Arena in Manchester, England.
Linares lost a 10-round unanimous decision to Armenia’s Zhora Himalayans (14-3-2, 9 KOs) in his last fight, which took place December 11 in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The three-division champion from Venezuela is still considered a dangerous puncher, but he hasn’t won a fight since he knocked out Mexican veteran Carlos Morales (then 19-4-4) in the fourth round of their February 2020 bout at Honda Center in Anaheim, California.
DAZN’s undercard coverage of the Catterall-Linares show is scheduled to begin Saturday at 7 p.m. BST in the United Kingdom and 2 p.m. EDT in the United Kingdom.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.