Briedis, Dorticos Ready to Battle for Cruiserweight Supremacy

By Jon Uddin🖊️ | 09/23/2020

The long awaited final battle to crown the Cruiserweight king of the World Boxing Super Series is finally set to take place Saturday night in Munich, Germany.

The Plazamedia Broadcast Center will set the stage as IBF Cruiserweight Champion 🇨🇺Yuniel “KO Doctor” Dorticos ( 24-1-0, 22KO) of Cuba, and 🇱🇻Mairis Briedis (26-1-0, 19KO) of Latvia, square off in the Cruiserweight finals of the World Boxing Super Series. Along with the Ali Trophy that goes to the tournament winner, the IBF (held by Dorticos) and RING titles are also at stake.

This is the second go around in the WBSS Cruiserweight tournament for both Dorticos and Briedis, as each man was taken out in the semifinals of the inaugural run of the tourney which is the only blemish on each fighters record. Briedis was defeated by the eventual winner of the tournament and former Undisputed Cruiserweight Champion Oleksandr Usyk by majority decision. The championship hopes for Dorticos came to a crushing end after being stopped in the 12th round after waging war with Murat Gassiev, who would be dominated by Usyk in the finals.

***A distraught Yuniel Dorticos struggles to contain his emotions after his loss to Murat Gassiev in 2018.***

It’s highly probable that had the semifinal matchups of the tournament been flipped (Usyk vs Dorticos, Gassiev vs Briedis) in 2018, the finals that played out would have been the same. With Usyk and Gassiev being the cream of the crop of the division, it doesn’t appear that the boxing gods were going to let anything stand in the way of those two meeting in the finals matchup.

When Usyk and Gassiev made the decision to move up to Heavyweight, Dorticos and Briedis took over the top two slots of the division, which fighter was best being a matter of opinion. The two warriors assumed positions similar to their opponents in the first WBSS, as the road to the Ali trophy was now believed to go through Dorticos and Briedis when the second tournament was announced.

Entering the second season of the tournament Mairis Briedis was slotted as the number 1 seed. The 35 year old who works as a police officer in Latvia, started his path to the finals with a unanimous decision win over Noel Mikaelian in the opening round held in November of 2018 in Chicago.

That was followed by the now infamous semifinals matchup where he delivered a third round TKO win over Krzysztof Glowacki in Latvia in June of 2019. The bout was a foul filled affair that was overshadowed by the blunders of referee Robert Byrd.

***Mairis Briedis has his hand raised in victory after his WBSS Semifinals win.***

Dorticos, 34, a native of Cuba who now resides in Miami, came in as the number 2 seed and started off by defeating Poland’s Mateusz Masternak by unanimous decision in October of 2018. In June of 2019 he would take on Andrew “The Beast” Tabiti in the semifinals and with his devastating right hand, delivered a tenth round knockout over the Chicago native to advance to the championship round.