• March 2018: Kamil Szeremeta entered the IBF's world ratings (initially ranked in 13th) when he captured the EBU title via a 2nd round stoppage.
• March 2019: The media reported that Szeremeta was one of the favourites to become Gennadiy’s first opponent under his new DAZN contract, but team GGGG had to go with Steve Rolls instead, because Kamil rejected the opportunity, due to his belief about not being ready by the stipulated June 2019 fight-date.
• March 2019: The Polish fighter enters The RING's top-ten middleweight rankings after he defeated Andrew Francillette, an inactive fighter that had previously tasted defeat against a man that Szeremeta had scored a second round stoppage over.
• August 2019: The media once again reported that Kamil Szeremeta’s name was mentioned as a likely foe for GGG’s October fight-date. Golovkin ended up facing Derevyanchenko instead.
• October 2019: Tom Loeffler admits they’re lobbying the IBF to instate Kamil Szeremeta as GGG’s mandatory challenger for his newly-acquired IBF title.
• November 2019: It was announced that GGG would be performing a mandatory defence of his IBF title against Kamil Szeremeta on the 29th February 2020. They failed to achieve that deadline.
I've checked Szeremeta's resume, and he's never beaten a top-12 IBF-rated middleweight and nor has he defeated a top-ten RING-rated 160lb-er either.
Kamil has never participated in an IBF final eliminator, which explains the reason why he's only rated 3rd by the IBF, but he was somehow awarded mandatory challenger status.
Szeremeta's last two outings came against opponents that had failed to emerge victorious in a combined total of 21 bouts, with Cortes losing 4 out of his last 5 contests and Palacios winning 2 of his previous 15 fights (without scoring a single victory in the last five years).
Kamil Szeremeta has only stopped five opponents over the course of his 21 bouts.
Interestingly though, ESPN hasn't included Szeremeta in their top-ten middleweight rankings.
I’ve watched a couple of Szeremeta's bouts and he fails my proverbial eyeball test.
Thoughts?
