Janibek Alimkhanuly will make a defense of his IBF middleweight title against #3 contender Andrei Mikhailovich this Friday, October 4th in a Top Rank promoted event at The Star in Sydney, Australia.
The undefeated Janibek (15-0, 10 KOs) will fight on Mikhailovich’s turf in Australia and will not receive much applause from the Aussie fans for his work. This makes it important that the Kazakhstan-born Janibek makes the rounds one-sided and ideally scores a knockout.
“Everyone knows and understands that he is easy work for me. I will knock him out very quickly,” Janibek said of Mikhailovich.
Top Rank wants to turn Janibek into a star, but they have a lot of work to do before that happens. What he misses are fights against these fighters: Carlos Adames, Erislandy Lara, Hamzah Sheeraz and Chris Eubank Jr.
If Janibek were to defeat rising star Sheeraz, that would help. However, the chances of Top Rank convincing the promoters for Sheeraz to match him against a dangerous puncher like Janibek are slim. They’re not going to do that because he’s too good, and Sheeraz has already shown a problem with his ability to take a hard hit.
The middleweight division is now empty of talented fighters. Janibek is stuck fighting no-name guys to increase his starting power, and that’s not the ideal way to rise to the top.
Janibek vs. Mikhailovich meeting will be shown live on ESPN+ this Friday, October 4. The start time is as follows: 5:00 am. ET / 10:00 a.m. The UK.
Not much attention was paid to the fight between the 31-year-old Alimkhanuly (15-0, 10 KOs) and challenger Mikhailovich (21-0, 13 KOs). Perhaps a big reason for that is that they are not well known in the US
Although 2016 Olympian Janibek is considered by many to be the #1 fighter in the middleweight division, he has not beaten any notable fighters to gain the popularity he needs to be noticed in the States and worldwide.
Mikhailovich was born in Russia and lives and fights in Australia. His best wins came against Les Sherrington, Ernesto España and Edisson Saltarin.
