Hamzah Sheeraz showed he is ready to challenge Janibek Alimkhanuly for his IBF and WBO middleweight titles by dispatching Tyler Denny in two rounds at Wembley Stadium in London last Saturday night.
Janibek should be the champion Sheeraz proclaims, but there are questions about whether he is ready. Tyler Denny is not the type of fighter that will prepare Hamzah to challenge Janibek for his belts. Matching Hamzah against light hitters like Tyler Denny stunts his growth as a fighter.
Is Hamzah Sheeraz a hype job?
Sheeraz is ranked #1 WBC and #1 WBO and ready for a world title shot. It’s unclear what the goal for his management is for his career because with how they’re moving him, it doesn’t look like he’s being prepared for the best fighters in the division like Janibek, Carlos Adames or Erislandy Lara.
It might not work for Sheeraz to capture the WBC belt from Adames and then use that title as a launching pad to move up to 168 for an immediate title shot against Canelo. Assuming that’s the goal, it will fail because Sheeraz’s popularity won’t be high enough in the US for Canelo to give him a title shot because the match won’t bring in good PPV numbers.
To get the Canelo payday, Hamzah needs to beat Sheeraz Janibek and Lara to get the American fans to take notice of him. He’s not going to do it by beating smaller, weaker fighters like Tyler Denny, and defeating Carlos Adames, who is arguably the weakest link among the three middleweight champions, won’t be enough. Adames is not known in the US, and is not considered one of the best.
If the idea is to create a manufactured fighter like Edgar Berlanga for big cash-out purposes, Sheeraz is fighting in the wrong division. At 168, he should compete against fighters his size to get a title shot against unified super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez.
He’s about to turn 27, and the way he’s moved, he could soon be 30 and still fighting lower-level opposition. Do they feel Sheeraz is not ready to fight the killers at middleweight? He has the size of a super middleweight, which is obviously one of the reasons he looked good.
It is understandable why Sheeraz does not want to move up to 168 as he will face guys who will expose him and take advantage of his fragile chin. However, it’s a waste of Sheeraz’s career if he stays at 160 and fights lesser opponents like Tyler Denny without at least trying to test himself against the best by facing Janibek.
Some fans feel that Sheeraz is a ‘hype job’ with a weak chin who will crumble once he is thrown in with one of the dangerous sharks in the 160-lb division.
Why doesn’t Sheeraz target Janibek?
Janibek is the test Sheeraz’s management needs to focus on because if the hard-hitting Kazahk destroys him, he probably isn’t worth keeping. It would be better to just dump Hamzah or focus on matching him against only domestic feeds.
Sooner or later they will have to throw Sheeraz into the deep end by putting him in one of the champions to see if he is worth placing high on the charts. Last weekend, Hamzah’s mismatch against Denny did not end in the co-feature on the Anthony Joshua vs. Daniel Dubois card does not belong at Wembley Stadium.
It was such a bad match, and it was clear that it was a showcase fight to make Hamzah look good after he was hurt by Austin Williams in his previous fight last June in Riyadh. Although Sheeraz eventually knocked Williams out in the 11th round, it was not a pretty sight to see him falter early.
Janibek is the guy Sheeraz needs to call out because he is considered the #1 talent in the 160-lb division. Hamzah Sheeraz has to take on 2016 Olympian Janibek to claim the top spot.
Light-punching Tyler Denny (19-3-3, 1 KO) lacked the size and firepower to handle the 6’3″ heavy puncher. The fight wasn’t even extremely competitive and didn’t do much to promote Sheeraz.
Janibek will defend his IBF/WBO titles next month against Andrei Mikhailovich (21-0, 13 KOs) on October 4 in Sydney, Australia. After that fight, Janibek’s schedule will be free, and he will be ready to defend against Hamzah if his management is willing to make that fight. I doubt they will because Janibek is the real deal.
