Busiest Boxer in America Shinard Bunch Headlines Tonight On FIGHTNIGHT LIVE Card

He’s been just about the busiest boxer in the game during the pandemic period, and I don’t know of any pros that aren’t record builders for other guys who’ve had more fights in such a short span of time that Shinard Bunch has.

The welterweight who reps Trenton, NJ headlines tonight on an RDR card in Feasterville, PA, which you can watch on Fightnight Live, debuted a pro on April 27, 2019. He fought seven times in ’19, going 6-1, dropping a six rounder to Paul Kroll. Bunch, now 21 years old, fought “just” five times in 2020, because COVID gummed up the works for everybody. So far in 2021, Bunch has gloved up three times, and he’s bested Dieumerci Nzau, Charlie Dubray and then, on Feb. 12, 14-28-3 Ariel Vasquez in Florida.

The young man goes where the fights are breaking out, so it’s back up East for the Saturday night main event, that you can watch on the streaming platform FloSports, which requires a moderate subscription fee. Fightnight Live is pleased to establish a connection to FloSports, a subscription sports broadcaster and streaming service, born in 2006, based in Austin, Texas.

I chatted with a chill Bunch, because he’d enjoyed his post weigh in chodown, on a pile of shrimp Alfredo.

Bunch (left) seems to be a guy on a run, with momentum, working in a very structured and contained frenzy. Trainer Chino Rivas, he tells me, is pretty much a godsend, because he so appreciates the amount of knowledge that he’s soaked up.

“This is our third fight or so, and man, I feel like everything’s improved, my speed, my power, the way I move, the way I think in the ring, the adjustments I makein there,” he stated.

“Not only physically, but mentally, too.”

That process, the sponging up of knowledge, he said, started on day one when he started with with Rivas.

The last two victims got stopped out in round one, but Shinard Bunch doesn’t sound like he’s gotten enamored with the quick dopamine hit that comes from the KO1 win.

“We don’t ever go in to make a quick hit, we just look for openings,” he said.

“And we don’t take anybody lightly. These opponents are in the ring for reason.”

Check out some Bunch, here he is taking care of things in his tenth pro fight:

Compare his progress, to how Shinard Bunch looked in his fourth pro tango, against Kevin Womack Jr. That face-off screened on Fightnight Live, on Oct. 4, 2019.

His Feasterville dancing partner in Feasterville, Krael, enters with a 17-17-3 record.

I can almost guarantee that with that record, he deserves to be better than .500. Krael gets invited to the party to put up a solid test, but he’s not being pushed as an A sider with a high ceiling. The 27 year old who was born in Hawaii, and has made Vegas his residence, last gloved up on Oct. 9, 2020. Top tier prospect Elvis Rodriguez stopped him out in round three of their scheduled eight.

“I’ve watched like four of his fights,” Bunch said. “He’s definitely a worthy opponent. He’s been known to last, throws a lot of punches, he can move. And will I be thinking of how other guys, like Rodriguez, beat him? No, definitely not, we will fight our fight. I’m not going in to impress anybody.”

Krael can expect a strong and confident foe, who is aggressive, who is going to stalk him, very patiently. He’ll need to be wary of both hands, Bunch has above average power. Punches might come at him straight, sweeping from the side, from underneath, or over the top, in a span of 10 seconds. Right hands to the body will probably score on Krael a good bit, and Krael shouldn’t expect that Bunch will get flustered.

Some back story; Shinard Bunch was raised by his mom, in Brooklyn, East NY. He picked up boxing young, after watching a Muhammad Ali DVD his mom bought, and worked with Zab Judah’s dad, Yoel Judah. His family moved to Trenton, NJ, when he was 13, and he found a gym outlet in Jersey, and got back to grind. Props to him, 2.

Get this–he had 406 amateur fights. And did he ever just get bored of that, I wondered? “Did I get sick of it? Plenty of times! But never as a pro. As an amateur I’d be fighting every week, sometimes two times a day! But then I’d come back to it…it’s something I really wanted to do, because I knew boxing would leave me far some day. Where? The promised land! The ultimate goal is a world championship, and the only thing also I’m looking forward to is making sure my family is alright.”

Bunch has three kids of his own, and a step-daughter he’s folded in, as well as five sisters and two brothers.

Fortunately, COVID hasn’t clamped down on Shinard Bunch, he shared. It didn’t take too long, 8 weeks or so, before he started seeing bad numbers in his region. “So I’ve been staying away from people, taking a lot of precautions, in the gym, wiping everything down,” he said, talking about that Lysol life. “At first I didn’t take it very seriously, but then I started seeing the numbers of dead. I knew it was not something to be playing with.” Pretty impressive, this guy hasn’t been afraid to keep grinding, working and traveling some to get fights, but he’s been on message with his hygiene and distancing, and stayed virus free.

“It’s still early in the year, I’d probably like to fight 7-8 more times this year,” Bunch said. He does a fight, then studies what he did right, and wrong, and looks to improve with each outing.

The card kicks off at 7:30 PM ET, on FloSports.

The young man simply sounds like he has his head screwed on just-right-tight. I expect he continues the momo and elongates Krael’s bad run.

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“In a year, we maybe get a title, USBA or something, get to No. 15, and after that start raising the stakes, start looking at bigger fights,” Shinard Bunch said, in closing. “We’ll move slow…well, some might not call it slow, but for me, it’s a good pace, it’s something I love to do. Down the line, anybody in my class or level, Terence Crawford, Gervonta Davis, Teofimo, Devin Haney…I keep working, stay focused, the sky’s the limit.”