Is Andy Cruz the most avoided man in boxing?

Lightweight contender Andy Cruz (5-0, 2 KOs) is hoping for big fights in 2025 after his 10-round unanimous decision victory over Omar Salido (20-2, 14 KOs) at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas last Saturday. night

(Credits: Melina Pizano/Matchroom)

Cruz dominates

Cruz’s trainer, Derek ‘Bozy’ Ennis, wanted him to go all out for a knockout after hurting Salido repeatedly from the eighth round, but he couldn’t do it. He still won by 99-91, 98-92 and 98-92. The judges were kind enough to give Salido any round because he didn’t seem to win any of them. It should have been 100-90 x 3.

Cruz’s promoter Eddie Hearn was tight-lipped afterward about who he might fight next. He mentioned going the IBF route, but that doesn’t seem like a possibility for Andy to get a title shot in 2025.

Ideally, Hearn would like to match Cruz against Keyshawn Davis, but he’s not at all interested. Keyshawn appeared last night, but probably only to be seen as a wrestler associated with rising Cuban star Andy Cruz in the amateurs.

“If I had to give a grade to my performance, I would say it was good, but you can always improve,” Andy Cruz told Social Boxingrating his performance in his one-sided win against Omar Salcido on Saturday night.

I put my best effort into the fight, but it was against a tough and good opponent. I was looking for a knockout from the beginning because I knew that given my ability, it was impossible for me to be beaten on points,” Cruz continued.

“So what I did was I realized I was a lot faster than him. He was a lot slower than me. So I went out and took advantage of that speed and almost took him out of there at the end.”

The fight was a mismatch as Salido was not in the same league as Andy Cruz, and that was evident from the start of the fight. Salido was just charging at every shot from the get-go, looking to score a knockout because he clearly knew his only path to victory was luck. This is how he fought in his previous fight against Chris Colbert on October 16. He was putting maximum power into every shot, which finally paid off with a ninth KO win.

“I think it’s important that you do that because you have to look at a lot of different ways,” Cruz said. “You face a lot of different fighters and a lot of strong opponents. So you face a lot of different situations in the ring, and you have to be prepared to understand what you do in those situations.

“What I have to do is work really hard to be accurate, to be quick, but also to come in and fight that way to come in and do what I have to do.

Keyshawn’s bitterness

“I entered, given that he is my son. I wanted to give him a big hug, but I was rejected. I don’t know if he’s upset with mebut hopefully, we can reconcile our differences in the future the next time we meet,” Cruz said of being rebuffed by Keyshawn Davis when he tried to hug him last Saturday after his win over Salcido at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas.

Keyshawn Davis is still pretty bitter about his four losses to Cruz in the fans and the bad time the boxing fans are giving him. The way Keyshawn talks, it sounds like he sees himself as a star who doesn’t have to take risky fights.

He has yet to fight anyone with such a high view of himself, and he entered the pros after falling short against Cruz in the amateurs. He won’t dare fight Cruz and it will ruin his chances of making easy money.

“What I have to do now is to enjoy this victory and keep doing what I’m doing, which is to keep moving forward and progressing with each fighter. I face a harder fight with each fighter. What I can say is that 2025 is going to be very, very interesting,” Cruz said.

Hearn Options

What will be interesting is to see if promoter Eddie Hearn can line up Andy Cruz with a world title in 2025 because the chances of getting a shot against these three fighters are non-existent:

– Gervonta Davis
– Shakur Stevenson
– Keyshawn Davis

None of these fighters have expressed interest in fighting Andy Cruz, and that likely won’t change in 2026. Cruz is too good. It will take Turki Al-Sheikh convincing one of these fighters to agree to fight him.

Cruz can always count on the sanctioning bodies to order a fight, but as we’ve seen with them, champions can deflect dangerous mandatory challengers for years. Boxing needs to change to prevent champions from avoiding their contenders because it hurts the sport.