Expert Top Boxing Betting Picks of the Week – July 16th
Jamie Munguia vs. Liam Smith
This fight is Saturday in Las Vegas televised by HBO and Munguia is heavily favored to successfully defend his WBO junior middleweight title. Munguia (29-0, 25 KOs), a 21-year-old from Mexico, will be making his first title defense when he meets former the former titleholder Smith (26-1-1, 14 KOs), a 29-year-old from England. Smith was scheduled to challenge then-champion Sadam Ali for the 154-pound belt earlier this year but dropped out because a severe skin infection kept him from training. Smith was replaced by Munguia, who knocked Ali out in the fourth round of a one-sided blowout on May 12 and inherited the mandatory obligation. Before the fourth round, there was some disagreement over whether or not to let Ali come out for another round, but the ringside doctor let the fight continue. The fourth and final knockdown drew an immediate stoppage from the referee. “This victory is something huge for me. This is a dream come true. Every fighter dreams of this. I want to thank the Nevada Commission for making this opportunity possible as they didn’t allow me to fight Gennady Golovkin. I want to show that I am ready to fight at the highest level and with the best fighters,” Munguia said after. Munguia was set to challenge Golovkin on May 5 but the fight fell through and Vanes Martirosyan was made Golovkin’s opponent. Smith last fought in November, beating Liam Williams for the second straight time, this time by majority decision. Two judges had Smith winning by scores of 117-111 and 116-112 while the other clearly was watching some other fight as he scored it 114-114. Smith won the vacant title in by seventh-round knockout of John Thompson in England in 2015 and made two successful defenses before losing the title by ninth-round knockout to Canelo Alvarez. Smith has won three fights in a row since.Oleksandr Usyk vs. Murat Gassiev
This one could be a pick’em by fight time as the two battle Saturday in Moscow with no American national TV. It’s for the undisputed cruiserweight title and the final of the World Boxing Super Series. The winner here gets the Muhammad Ali Trophy commissioned for the tournament and will become the first undisputed cruiserweight champion of the four-belt era and only the fourth fighter to unify all four major titles in any division. The others are former middleweight champions Bernard Hopkins (2004) and Jermain Taylor (2005) and former junior welterweight champion Terence Crawford. This bout was originally scheduled to take place on May 11 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, but Usyk suffered a minor left elbow injury during his training camp, which forced the 200-pound final to be postponed. Usyk is a 31-year-old from the Ukraine and 14-0 with 11 knockouts. He comes off a majority decision win over Mairis Briedis for the WBC and WBO cruiserweight belts. That fight could have gone either way as two judges had it 115-113 for Usyk and the other 114-114. Usyk won the 2012 Olympic gold medal in the heavyweight division.![Murat Gassiev should be one of your Boxing Betting picks of the week.](https://cdn.mybookie.ag/wp-content/uploads/GassievBox.jpg)