It has been a long road for super middleweight Vladimir Shishkin.
Shishkin returned this Thursday, March 28, stopping Mike Guy in the seventh-round in their bout at the Wayne State Fieldhouse, Detroit, Mich, on DAZN.
Shishkin (16-0, 10 KOs) currently holds the No. 2 ranking in the IBF super middleweight division. This is right behind William Scull. Yet Shishkin has struggled to get television dates or mandatory title fights. One of the issues is that Canelo Alvarez has held all four world titles in the division since 2021 and that has forced the rest of the division to come to a screeching halt.
Shishkin’s promoter, Dmitry Salita told BoxingScene: “Shishkin is a very good fighter. It is very difficult for him to get a significant fight. He had to [get] into a mandatory position to get a real shot. That is all we have been waiting for, and that’s why he fought [Jose] Uzcategui.
“Actually, we won the purse bid to win to fight [Evgeny] Shevchenko [in 2022]. Then he got COVID in camp with Tyson Fury. That got scratched and they called another purse bid.”
Shishkin fought Uzcategui in 2022. That contest was billed as an IBF super middleweight title eliminator but the problem is at the top of the division.
In the past, Shishkin has been in the running to land a fight with Canelo. Now, it seems the team is looking to ‘wait out’ the Mexican star.
Scull holds the mandatory position for the IBF, so if Canelo opts to not make a defense against him when that bout is ordered, that should – in theory – open the doors for Shishkin to face Scull in an interim title fight or a vacant title fight.
Fear would not be the reason Canelo would look in another direction from Scull, but rather a lack of financial gain. Scull is not well-known and Shishkin is in the most undesirable spot in the sport as a high-risk, low-reward fighter. The positive for him is that he holds a high world ranking by the IBF.
“Now, he is in the No. 2 position and we are waiting for the IBF to order William Scull to fight Canelo [Alvarez],” Salita explained. “[That fight] is unlikely to happen – and at that point either the IBF is going to strip Canelo or they are going to order for William Scull to fight Shishkin for the interim or the full title. That is the plan.”
Salita also said getting Shishkin exposure has been a challenge.
“The fact that he is from Russia made it hard for him to get fights on television, because of politics and networks, and all different stuff,” Salita admitted. “So it was difficult to maneuver him.”