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Boxing is everywhere you look this weekend, from streaming outlets like ESPN+ and DAZN to traditional mediums like FOX Sports 1 and Showtime. The broadcasts are headlined by both mismatches and pick em’ fights, championship clashes and squash matches. Some are easy to predict, others not so much.
To help decipher where to put your money, what follows is your guide to betting on boxing in the second weekend of April. This includes two premium parlays, categorized into “dime” and “nickel” plays.
The dime play is the premium play of the week: picking out the biggest miscalculations by the bookies for almost guaranteed outcomes. Nickel plays are less valuable and should not be wagered on as aggressively.
Happy punting.
Dime Play
| Lomachenko-Crolla to start Round 4 | -400 | 5dimes |
| Arnold Barboza Jr. to win | -500 | Bovada |
| Quillin-Truax over 7.5 rounds | -205 | 5dimes |
Together, a $50 wager wins $59 ($109 payout)
Gallagher Guarantee
Vasyl Lomachenko is the biggest (and best) fighter on tap over the weekend—curiously throwing down on a Friday but that’s another story. He is a wide, really a gargantuan, favorite (-10000) over his opponent Anthony Crolla. But the price collapses if Lomachenko can’t take out Crolla in haste. And he likely won’t, nor try to.
While the unified lightweight champion had previously stopped eight consecutive opponents, the unspectacular Jose Pedraza seemed to keep up with him five months ago until Lomachenko finally shifted out of first gear in the penultimate round. Crolla of course doesn’t have a chance of pulling off an upset but Lomachenko has never stopped anybody in under four rounds and trainer Joe Gallagher’s stable are notoriously slow starters, opting to sit behind a high guard, safe from major damage, for the first half of their bouts which guarantees Crolla is, if nothing else, still there standing to open Round 4.
Crolla has been read the scorecards in his last five fights, including four over the complete 12-round distance. The last fight of the Englishman’s to end early was three years ago against Ismael Barroso, who Crolla let punch himself out before jumping the Venezuelan in the seventh stanza. Bank on Crolla to do the same and bide his time. If Lomachenko does go out to prove a point and rush Crolla, the 32-year-old former titleholder is not one to give up so easily. Consider his exhorting Gallagher to let him out for the 12th and final round amid a blowout loss with Jorge Linares.
High Rising
Top Rank’s Friday show isn’t a lengthy production, featuring just four bouts. Included is the undefeated Arnold Barboza Jr. taking on not his biggest test but indeed the most recognizable name of his career, Mike “Mile High” Alvarado. The line for this fight was originally too good to be true as the Barboza opened at a one-to-two favorite (-200). As it turned out, in the middle of the night on Tuesday, the odds plummeted to -500 for very good reason.
Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images
Alvarado will be 39 this summer. His health, not boxing, was of main concern following a damaging span of losses between 2012 and 2015. He’s somehow since strung together six straight wins on the comeback trail but looked painfully slow and borderline decrepit. His last opponent Robbie Cannon, a punching bag free to be dinged, moved in a similarly rickety fashion and was dispatched in two rounds with a few telegraphed overhands.
Barboza however has looked more and more like a can’t-miss prospect since upsetting fringe contender Mike Reed on ESPN last year and sharper than ever four months ago in a shutout win over Manuel Lopez, demonstrating a stiff jab and fine composite punching. On the right side of 30, the California-born operator is too young, too fast, too sharp and too rangy for Alvarado.
Jump on this line as quickly as possible before it falls even further.
Minnesota Mettle
Stephanie Trapp/Showtime
In Minnesota this weekend, Peter Quillin is in for his sternest test yet at 168 pounds fighting in Caleb Truax’s backyard. Quillin’s heart for the fight game doesn’t seem to be what it once was since a shocking defeat to Danny Jacobs, fighting just twice since that first-round knockout loss in 2015. In his previous fight, J’Leon Love (who not long ago David Benavidez ditched in two rounds) stood up to Quillin’s best shots for 10 full rounds.
Truax has proven to be much more resilient than a fighter of Love’s calibre. While stopped twice in his career, he made it to the championships rounds with the aforementioned Jacobs and more recently twice extended James DeGale, whose power had long been understated. With Minnesota behind him, there is no question the man called “Golden” will gut this one out, as has been his calling card. Reaching the eighth period is nowhere near too much to expect.
Nickel Play
| Derevyanchenko-Culcay over 9.5 rounds | -185 | 5dimes |
| Jaime Munguia by knockout | -400 | 5dimes |
| Patrick Teixeira inside the distance | +110 | bet365 |
Together, a $25 wager wins $76 ($101 payout)
Veteran Affairs
Though Sergiy Derevyanchenko is a big favorite (-1400) for his ability to masterfully dismantle an opposing boxer—his steady undoing of the formerly unbreakable Tureano Johnson a perfect example of the Ukrainian’s attritional ways—Jack Culcay is cut from a similar clothe. Both are well-conditioned, systematic inside fighters, who don’t chase knockouts, so their indistinguishable styles will probably cancel each other out. The bout will advance toward the latter stages while one or the other tries to crack the puzzle in front of them.
Boris Streubel/Bongarts
Culcay, rich in both veteran knowhow and pedigree, was never stopped in an excellent career at junior middleweight, where he won European and secondary world titles. He was outmatched by Demetrius Andrade and then Maciej Sulecki, but gave the Polish middleweight some scares.
In short, Derevycanchenko is an animal but his executions take time. And time is what Culcay manages so well after a decade’s worth of 12-rounders.
Put your money on the German transplant surviving the first 10 rounds, if not the entire distance.
Mexico’s Kayos
Jaime Munguia already fought once in 2019, brawling with Takeshi Inoue in January, shoveling with abandon as he is known for. Having already registered 27 knockouts in his 32-fight career, another KO this weekend down in Monterrey, Mexico over an aging veteran in Dennis Hogan would not be a surprise.
Hogan is tough as leather, training regularly in Australia with Jeff Horn, who he resembles in his ability to plow forward. In his last fight, he took care of business against a club fighter, Jamie Weetch by unanimous decision although before that Jimmy Kelly gave him a tougher go. Hogan’s tremendous beard was display, eating left hands like candy, but he was susceptible to Kelly’s counter uppercuts and showed no interest in protecting his midsection from abuse.
In Mexico, it won’t be a third-rate Englishman hitting Hogan but a puncher unlike any he’s faced and one who loves targeting the body. To boot, Munguia will enjoy a significant size advantage: six feet to his opponent’s 5’8”.
At 34 years old, Hogan can’t withstand that for long.
On the same card, Golden Boy Promotions refuses to give up on Patrick Teixeira, who generally throws the same combination over and over: a shoveling left hook low followed by a right hook upstairs. To his credit, the maneuver paved the way to a winning record and over 20 knockouts—even if against a proper puncher like Curtis Stevens, he came unstuck (rattled by a jab, no less). Luckily, Teixeira’s next opponent Mario Alberto Lozana (+850) is more than a few notches below world-level and the odds reflect as much.
So dog odds (+110) for a knockout from Teixiera is great value.
Campaigning mostly in his native Mexico, Lozano is nails but lost every step-up in competition he’s taken. And at the end of Teixeira’s lethal gloves will be a drastic eight-inch reach advantage that the middling Mexican doesn’t have the repertoire to be competitive.
