Carlos Adames is one top middleweight who would gladly fight Janibek Alimkhanuly.
Bob Santos, Adames’ trainer, doesn’t think the feeling would be mutual, though. An Adames-Alimkhanuly bout would be difficult to make because of their competing promotional and platform partnerships, especially since neither fighter has the highest profile, but Santos suspects Kazakhstan’s Alimkhanuly wouldn’t want to face Adames in an official fight after what happened the few times that they sparred.
“Ask Janibek what happened to him when he sparred with Carlos Adames,” Santos told BoxingScene.com. “I can’t imagine what would happen with 10-ounce gloves. And I think anybody that has any kind of eye for the sport of boxing, I don’t know that they’d be favoring Janibek to beat Carlos Adames.”
The left-handed Alimkhanuly tore through Canadian underdog Steven Butler in his most recent defense of the WBO middleweight title. Alimkhanuly (14-0, 9 KOs) knocked Montreal’s Butler (32-4-1, 26 KOs) to the canvas three times on his way to a second-round knockout victory May 13 at Stockton Arena in Stockton, California.
Adames (22-1, 17 KOs) will make the first defense of his WBC interim middleweight title against former IBF/IBO/WBA 154-pound champ Julian Williams (28-3-1, 16 KOs, 1 NC) on Saturday night. Showtime will televise their 12-round, 160-pound bout as the main event of a three-bout broadcast from The Armory in Minneapolis (9 p.m. EDT; 6 p.m. PDT).
Adames wants to challenge unbeaten WBC middleweight champ Jermall Charlo, yet neither Adames nor Santos expect the inactive Houston native to face Adames anytime in the foreseeable future. The Dominican Republic’s Adames is consistently listed as a 5-1 favorite to defeat Philadelphia’s Williams, who is 1-2 in his past three appearances and hasn’t beaten a championship-caliber opponent since he upset then-unbeaten Jarrett Hurd by unanimous decision to win the three aforementioned junior middleweight titles in May 2019.
Santos commended Williams for taking this difficult fight against Adames, but he doesn’t think other middleweights will follow Williams’ lead after Saturday night.
“These guys know that Adames is just at a different level,” Santos said. “They know. I think what’s gonna have to happen with Adames is most likely we’re gonna have to go up to ’68, unfortunately. At middleweight, I just don’t think these guys are gonna fight him. … He’s as big a puncher as there is in the division, bigger than most of the 68-pounders.”
Adames is 4-0 since he lost a close 12-round unanimous decision to Brazilian southpaw Patrick Teixeira in November 2019 at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas. Losing that fight for the WBO interim junior middleweight title cost Adames his promotional contract with Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc., which promotes Alimkhanuly, and motivated Adames to take training much more seriously.
The strong, skillful Adames demolished Mexican contender Juan Macias Montiel in his last fight. Adames, who fought from a southpaw stance due to a damaged knuckle on his right hand, stopped Montiel (23-6-2, 23 KOs) in the third round and won the WBC interim championship October 8 at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, California.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.