Top super lightweight prospect Nicholas Irizarry will fight for the second time as a professional Saturday night when he faces Anthony Overby at the UCF Arena in Orlando, Florida. The card is topped by Dewayne Beamon who takes on Marvin Solano.

Irizarry, who is trained by one of Youtube sensation Logan Paul’s trainers Milton Lacroix, made his professional debut on October 12th in Southern California on the Ronald Johnson-Sergio Ramirez undercard. Irizarry overwhelmed Johnie White, stopping him on his feet in the second round.

This will be Irizarry’s second fight in two months and Ron Johnson’s American Dream Promotions plans on keeping the 23 year old very busy as he gains professional experience.

“Irizarry is a very talented super lightweight prospect that will be a world champion in a few years. He has a very bright future in the sport and we plan on building him up the right way,” Johnson explained.

Saturday’s card is promoted by Undisputed promotions and tickets are still available at Ticketmaster.com.

By Bart Barry-

Saturday in Hermosillo’s practically named Centro
de Usos Multiples, Sonora’s Juan Francisco “El Gallo” Estrada made a
harder-than-planned first defense of his Ring super flyweight championship
against North Carolina’s Dewayne “Mr. Stop Running” Beamon, on DAZN.  Estrada dropped Beamon twice in round 2 and
punched him till no vim remained in round 9, and Panamanian referee Abdiel
Barragan interceded at the right moment. 
Between rounds 2 and 9, though, Beamon gave Estrada a proper fitness
test.

Estrada is sensational in this way: If you might
employ a hybrid rating system, a blind sampling, that removes size and
ethnicity and purse and broadcaster hyperbole – raw raw, in lieu of rah rah –
he’d be top 5 on any list composed by an honest hand.  He is distinguished by his losses, oldschool
style, much as his wins.

Since 2011 Estrada has lost twice.  His first loss came to Chocolatito Gonzalez
in a fight that helped burnish Gonzalez’s ranking as the world’s best
prizefighter in any weight.  Estrada’s
second loss came to the man who violently stamped the end of Chocolatito’s reign,
Srisaket Sor Rungvisai.  The second loss
narrower than the first, and the first narrower
indeed than scorers had it.  Estrada is
the only Mexican heir in his generation to the master Juan Manuel Marquez;
Estrada somehow fulfilled coach Nacho Beristain’s vision in Sonora, some 2,000
km north of Mexico City, whilst Beristain played celebrity slapntickle with Son
of the Legend and (ghost of) The Golden Boy.

Canelo Alvarez is, of course, Mexico prizefighting’s
greatest financial draw, but despite his admirable pursuit of able competition,
Canelo hasn’t Estrada’s class or mettle. 
After losing to Chocolatito in a world title match at 108 pounds Estrada
fought Brian Viloria for a world title at 112 pounds, five months later, and
won a title Estrada defended five times. 
Then Estrada got outworked by Sor Rungvisai, the man who put Chocolatito
in shavasana pose like a chocolate yogi – not outpunched or stiffened, mind
you, only outworked.  And in April when
the rematch happened with Sor Rungvisai, Estrada went directly at one of our
sport’s hardest punchers and snatched his title.

All of that is a hell of a throatclearing preamble
to writing this: Estrada didn’t look great Saturday against an otherwise-anonymous,
34-year-old Carolinian named Dewayne Beamon (whom the Spanish-language
broadcast assured us gave up promising careers in both basketball [5-foot-5]
and football [114 1/2 pounds] to pursue boxing).  Some of that was Estrada, but more of it was
Beamon. 

Here’s the part that was Estrada.  Making a first world-title defense in his
home state of Sonora since 2015 Estrada found himself subjected to all the
distracting ills of a homecoming – ticket requests, camp visits, interviews
with the local daily.  Those distractions
told in Estrada’s conditioning.  Estrada
would daze Beamon with a counter then unload on him with leads then spend a
bemused next round with his mouth open. 
The oftener that pattern happened, the infrequenter Estrada soldout the
attack.  Often as not after round 4
Estrada didn’t put it on Beamon until or unless Beamon pissed him off.

Beamon, frankly, was too savvy to do that very
often.  If Estrada’s conditioning was
suspect Beamon’s was not.  The Carolinian
trained for a world title challenge in the champ’s hometown and acted like
it.  He absorbed very fine punches from a
very fine prizefighter and didn’t wilt till well offschedule.  Class told eventually, but that eventuality
arrived later than aficionados expected and way way later than Estrada penciled
it in camp.

That tardiness was, in some part, a matter of
class.  Estrada is a masterful
counterpuncher accustomed to landing apex predators on his fists.  Which is to write the force of Beamon’s
attack wasn’t great enough to turn concussively against him – the same way a
hitter might drive an 80 mph fastball to the warning track with the same swing
he’d land a 100 mph fastball in the bleachers. 

Beamon never really got the angle calculated for
his righthand.  While we’re playing with
baseball metaphors, let’s go here: Beamon, accustomed to much lesser hitters,
didn’t hide the ball coming out of his windup. 
However it looked on flatscreen, something Beamon did gave away his
righthand, and Estrada perceived it early every time.  Sometimes Estrada went Mexican with that
perception and ate Beamon’s right glove to emasculate discourage the challenger
a bit.  Most of the time Estrada let the
punch flash over him by the narrowest possible margin.

The two or three times Beamon threw the
telegraphed righthand and neither of the above scenarios played out, the two or
three times Beamon put a sting on Estrada, the champ retaliated swiftly and
disproportionately.

But here’s the thing about Beamon.  He acquitted himself very well in his role of
designated homecoming opponent, giving Estrada far more than his paycheck
anticipated.  Beamon was not going to
decision Estrada in Sonora and he wasn’t going to knock him stiff either, and
if the rest of us knew that during the ringwalk, Beamon surely knew it a
quarterhour before he succumbed.  That
Beamon’s shoulders didn’t sag till round 9 speaks to Beamon’s character and
speaks of it well.  “Mr. Stop Running” –
no, that nickname doesn’t work any more elegantly in Spanish – went in on the
champion, one of the world’s best prizefighters, and got his money’s worth.  A good thing for Beamon, Estrada and the rest
of us.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry

After cleaning out his home state of North Carolina and surrounding area, as his own promoter and manager, talented super flyweight Dewayne “Mr. Stop Running” Beamon went out in search of better competition.

The quest, which involved a two-year stop in what he calls “boxing’s wild west” of Tijuana and Mexico City, has finally landed the 33-year-old a WBO #12-ranking and a promoter determined to help Beamon reach his full potential.

On Saturday, June 22, at CSU’s Wolstein Center in Cleveland, Ohio, that promoter, Ejay Matthews of Bigger Than Life Entertainment, will partner with six-time World Champion Miguel Cotto’s Miguel Cotto Promotions and Mo Entertainment to present “Making A Champion,” a six-fight night of world-class boxing featuring Beamon (16-1-1, 11 KOs) taking on former world title challenger and WBO #14-ranked Froilan “The Sniper” Saludar (30-3-1, 21 KOs) from the Philippines in a 12-round showdown for the WBC United States (USNBC) Super Flyweight Championship in the main event.

Making A Champion will be televised live on CBS Sports (11:00 pm ET/8:00 pm PT) and the exciting undercard will be streamed live on www.fite.tv (7:30 pm ET/4:30 pm PT).

Tickets for “Making A Champion” are priced at $30, $40, $65 and Ringside $150 and are on sale now at wolsteincenter.com or Wolstein Center Box Office on CSU campus.

Beamon is a latecomer to boxing, as he wasn’t able to start amateur boxing until the relatively late age of 24.

“Boxing was always my passion. I was born to box, but my parents wouldn’t let me get into it because I was a football and basketball star and that would get me into college. I had a full scholarship all the way through Southern Virginia University. But the whole time I was in school, I was sneaking off to a boxing gym to train at night. If the school found out what I was doing, I could have been kicked out.”

Upon graduating with a B.A. in Family Childcare Development, Beamon finally had his opportunity and immediately made the most of it. A natural talent, in his short amateur career, he won several titles including two national championships and ended with an impressive 48-2 record.

Beamon turned professional in 2015 and quickly tore through his regional competition to the point that he opened his own promotional company, Stop Running Promotions, and started using his own money and putting on his own shows to lure better opponents into the ring in his own main events, many of them for regional championships. In his four-year professional career, Beamon has already held the UBF World Featherweight, IBO International Super Flyweight, UBF World Super Flyweight, IBO Inter-Continental Super Flyweight and UBF World Super Flyweight Championships.

“I’ve always had trouble finding competition in the US,” explained Beamon. “It’s been like that from the start. I got my nickname when I was 33-0 as an amateur and nobody would fight me. Me and my friends used to say, ‘You all got to stop running,’ to my opponents. So, in the pros, I stared promoting my own fights and paying good money for better opponents to come in and fight me. Sometimes I would make money and sometimes I would lose, but eventually it became too much work to train and fight while doing everything to put on the show, so I stopped promoting and went looking for a promoter.”

Beamon says he found a lot more competition in Mexico and signed with a promotional outfit there, but admits it ultimately wasn’t the situation he was looking for.

“I had to keep fighting in other people’s hometowns. I would still knock them out, but it wasn’t the best deal for me. Nobody would fight me 10 rounds and I was getting hit low and head butted a lot, and nobody said anything. I beat one guy and it’s not even on my Box Rec. It was the Wild Wild West.”

That’s when Beamon met up with Matthews, signed with his promotional company and relocated to Las Vegas to work with Joe Vargas and assistant Luis Anthony at Big Shot Boxing.

“Everything is going great now. I love the training in Vegas. I don’t have to travel around to find good work. I’m sparring with (IBF Mini Flyweight) World Champion Deejay Kriel of South Africa right now. I feel like this deal has moved me a lot closer to my dream of winning a world title.

To move forward, Beamon must get through the formidable Saludar, who challenged former champ Sho Kimura for the World Boxing Organisation World Flyweight belt in July 2018 and, in his 10-year career, has previously held the WBO Asia Pacific Youth Flyweight, WBO Asia Pacific Youth Flyweight, WBO Youth Flyweight, WBO Asia Pacific Flyweight, WBO Oriental Flyweight and WBO Inter-Continental Flyweight Championships.

“I know his promoter only deals with good fighters and he was bought up the right way and promoted the right way, but he always failed when it came to title shots. I also know I’m not letting him beat me,” said Beamon of Saludar. “It feels great to fight on national TV for the first time. It’s like a dream come true. In North Carolina, I’m the number fighter in my division and everybody comes to see me fight. But I know if I ever want to be big-time, I have to fight outside my area and I need to put on the kinds of performances that make people remember my name. I want to make Americans care about the super flyweight division again and this is my chance.”

In the second televised main event, Canada’s undefeated Cody “The Crippler” Crowley (17-0, 9 KOs) will take on the United Kingdom’s Navid “Nav” Mansouri (19-2-2, 6 KOs) in a 12-round battle for the WBC United States (USNBC) Super Welterweight Championship.

In other intriguing match-ups, Cleveland’s own Miguel Angel “Silky Smooth” Gonzalez (24-4, 16 KOs) will fight eight lightweight rounds against Africa’s Albinius “Danny Boy Albino” Felesianu (18-2-1, 7 KOs); and in a six-round super lightweight scrap undefeated Montana “Too Pretty” Love (11-0-1, 5 KOs) will face Africa’s also undefeated Tshibangu “Bebe Rico” Kayembe (9-0-3, 3 KOs).

###

Ray Leonard Jr., son of six-time world champion, Sugar Ray Leonard, along with actor and television host, Chris Spencer will provide the CBS Sports commentary. World renowned clothing designer, Karl Kani will be providing outfits for the ring girls.

The Wolstein Center is located at 2000 Prospect Avenue in Cleveland. On fight night, the doors open at 7:00 pm and the action starts at 7:30 pm. Making A Champion is sponsored by B&M BBQ.

About Bigger Than Life Entertainment

BTLE is a full-service entertainment company specializing in Boxing Promotions, Public Relations and Artist Management. They place Sports and Entertainment celebrities at major events worldwide and offer sports tickets and packages in Las Vegas, across the U.S., and internationally.

About Miguel Cotto Promotions

MCP stems from the vision and passion of Miguel Angel Cotto Vazquez with the premise of giving the boxer what boxing gave his family. Emerging in 2005, MCP has since established a great rapport with the community with over 13 years in the industry solidifying its spot as one of the leading sporting firms in Puerto Rico.