Johnson hopes for surprise result against Salas
Sceanantonie Johnson will be looking to spring a major surprise when he fights Team Canada’s highly thought-of Ricardo Salas in the feature bout on tonight’s Wray & Nephew White Overproof Rum Contender welterweight series card at the Chinese Benevolent Association auditorium.
The main bout will be fought over five rounds of three minutes each, while the two amateurs bouts will be contested over three three-minute rounds as one will get the programme under way at 8:30 pm.
This will be followed by an interlude of fun, dance and light comedy with the audience involved to usher in the main event.
Johnson a tall gangling figure with a reach of 79 inches, has an amateur ring record of 15 fights with nine wins against six losses and will take centre stage against the Mexican-born Salas in the main event.
Salas has a ring record of 82 fights with one loss as an amateur. His professional record of eight fights with seven wins against one defeat is also impressive. The defeat coming at the tail-end of his 2017 campaign in the month of December.
In their pre-match interviews both fighters predicted victories. However, while a fit-looking Johnson was reluctant at spelling out a strategy for accomplishing his objective, he said: “This is boxing and with boxing it is always unpredictable. I have trained hard, I am in good condition, so let us see what happens on the night. My coaching, my level of training has stepped up, my level of condition has stepped up, everything has stepped up.
“I’m glad for this opportunity, looking to take it as a professional one step at a time,” added the St Thomas Boxing Club representative. “For a club that just started boxing four years ago, this is a good step up.”
Salas through his interpreter Daniel Chacko Wilmot said he was here to win the championship. The 19-year-old Canadian resident who has a 70 ½-inch reach has good reasons to be confident of victory after his KO win over Team Jamaica’s Devon Moncriffe, whom he decked three times in round one before stopping him in the round.
Team Jamaica holds a 4-2 advantage in the eight-fight preliminary round from which each winner advances to the quarter-finals.