Highlights and results: Anderson, Davis, Ali Walsh win on undercard

Jared Anderson TKO-2 Oleksandr Teslenko

On paper, if you don’t look very closely, this was a “big step up” for the 22-year-old Anderson, who is now 11-0 (11 KO), but if you looked closely, you saw that Teslenko (17-2, 13 KO) was a 29-year-old Ukrainian-Canadian with a paper-thin record and had been stopped in five by Shawndell Terell Winters two fights ago in Brampton, Ontario. Anderson is also about 30 lbs heavier than Teslenko, just a naturally bigger man.

So saying that, Anderson getting the second round blowout is no surprise. But it also means he did what he really should have done in this matchup.

Anderson is still 22 and still putting things together, far off from when he’ll be ready for top fights, so I’d advise to relax a bit on calling for him to fight serious contenders. He’s not ready and it would be a pretty curious move to throw him in with someone truly established. He’ll keep coming along barring any surprising setbacks, and it could be two or three years before he’s in with someone actually dangerous on paper.

Keyshawn Davis TKO-2 Jose Zaragoza

The 22-year-old Davis goes to 4-0 (3 KO) as a pro, absolutely obliterating the way over-matched Zaragoza (8-4-1, 2 KO) inside of two rounds, finishing things on a vicious body shot. You have to credit Zaragoza for getting up and making this a TKO instead of a KO, but the referee was absolutely right to stop the fight there. He could have stopped it on the first knockdown, probably.

Davis, who will settle at lightweight early in his pro career, is a true blue chip prospect, probably the best male prospect to come out of the Team USA Olympic system since Andre Ward, and I’m counting guys like Errol Spence Jr and JoJo Diaz Jr and Jose Ramirez, who have had really good pro careers despite a lack of Olympic success.

Davis is working with Bud Crawford’s camp out in Nebraska, and he seems happy to be moved along quickly and get his career going.

“I’m ready, man, push me as fast as you want to. I’m gonna take it to the limit, I’m gonna take it to the highest limit, and I promise I’m not gonna let y’all down,” Davis said post-fight.

Nico Ali Walsh MD-4 Reyes Sanchez

One judge had it 38-38, another had it 39-37 for Ali Walsh, and the third had a laughable 40-36 pre-filled card. Bad Left Hook also had it 38-38. Give credit to Sanchez (6-1, 2 KO), a 29-year-old Kansas club fighter who came in there and after feeling out the first round, landed some shots, was a little awkward, and did his best.

The concern those rooting for Ali Walsh (3-0, 2 KO) should have is that Sanchez’s incoming 6-0 record was pure paper fluff, and Ali Walsh really isn’t fooling anyone who knows better when he talks about how this was a great fighter most people wouldn’t face in their third fights.

I don’t mean to hate on Ali Walsh, who is 21 and seems like a nice enough young man and is doing his best to learn and get better, but if this were any other prospect of the , he would not be having fights on ESPN main cards yet, and he would also not be receiving even a tenth of the attention. If you look at this full card, prelims included, Ali Walsh might have been the sixth-best prospect.

All I mean to say, really, is that the TV is going to over-hype this because the TV is almost fully promoter-filtered, then someone out there has to be honest about it, and I don’t think they’re doing him any favors with the way they’re over-selling what level of prospect he is right now. You might even be doing him a favor now that people have heard his name a bit, know who he is, to scale the attention and the hype back. We saw recently when Campbell Hatton fought on a smaller show in Spain, he looked far more relaxed and comfortable in the ring than he has on some major UK cards with so much focus on him.