On a steamy night in Queens where the ghosts of Louis Armstrong and neighborhood street fights seemed to hum in the humid air, Hamzah Sheeraz didn\u2019t just arrive\u2014he detonated. And somewhere between the second knockdown and the referee waving it off like a man tired of watching a car crash, you realized: Sheeraz isn\u2019t the same kid who got punked by Carlos Adames. That version died back in February. This one? This one had Andy Lee in his corner and murder in his gloves.<\/p>\n
It was billed as bad blood. What it became was a public execution under stadium lights, and Edgar Berlanga was the body left twitching on the altar.<\/p>\n
The stats will tell you Sheeraz landed 62 punches to Berlanga\u2019s 46. That he connected on 43.7% of his power shots. But stats don\u2019t tell the story. You had to see Berlanga\u2019s eyes glass over like a man remembering a debt he can\u2019t pay. You had to hear the crowd deflate, row by row, as their hometown hammer got bent into scrap metal by a 6\u20193\u201d Brit with long arms and longer memory.<\/p>\n
Because this fight wasn\u2019t just about momentum. It was about redemption, about shaking the stench of that Adames draw off like last week\u2019s booze sweat. Sheeraz had looked lost back then\u2014confused, hesitant, like a man who left his courage in the sauna. But tonight, he looked sharp, surgical, and mean. The way fighters look when they know they\u2019ve been doubted.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Berlanga.<\/strong><\/p>\n Once hailed as Puerto Rico\u2019s next bloodletter, Berlanga came into this one talking tough, chest puffed and legacy in hand. Two fights removed from being fed to Canelo and spit out like gristle, he needed this win. Instead, he got dragged. His jab looked like a man swatting flies. His footwork? Like trying to dance drunk in combat boots. Sheeraz made him look like a cardboard cutout of his old self, one that forgot how to duck.<\/p>\n Round 4 was where the walls caved in.<\/p>\n Sheeraz started picking his shots like a man at a deli counter\u2014jab, right hand, hook to the liver. Berlanga hit the canvas like a sack of bad decisions. He got up grinning, gloves banging, the universal signal for \u201cI\u2019m screwed but I still have teeth.\u201d That lasted maybe 15 seconds before he was horizontal again.<\/p>\n By Round 5, Sheeraz could smell blood\u2014and not the kind that pumps honorably through the veins, but the kind that trickles when your career starts coughing up its own resume. A left hook, a right straight, and Berlanga was down for the third and final time. He didn\u2019t protest. You can\u2019t protest gravity.<\/p>\n The Andy Lee Effect<\/strong><\/p>\n Credit where it\u2019s due: Andy Lee has polished Sheeraz into something dangerous. The combinations flowed like jazz. The footwork was tight. The jab was more than just a rangefinder\u2014it was a razor. You don\u2019t walk into someone\u2019s backyard, knock over their mailbox, and make yourself a sandwich in their kitchen unless you\u2019ve got a corner man who knows how to tame the demons.<\/p>\n Under Lee\u2019s watch, Sheeraz didn\u2019t just survive\u2014he evolved. He kept the reach, lost the hesitation, and found the kind of timing that turns fights into statements.<\/p>\n But Let\u2019s Be Honest: Was Berlanga Ever That Good?<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s the question nobody wants to ask out loud. Berlanga racked up 16 straight knockouts against a carousel of cab drivers and seasonal warehouse workers. The moment he fought real competition, the mystique started bleeding out.<\/p>\n He beat Jonathan Ortiz in March\u2014but Ortiz looked like he wandered into the wrong locker room. And before that? He was handled by Canelo with the same care you\u2019d use swatting a housefly. Maybe Berlanga was a mirage. Or maybe Sheeraz made him one.<\/p>\n A Star Is Rising, But The Sky\u2019s Still Crowded<\/strong><\/p>\n With the super middleweight division stacked like an overcrowded bar at last call\u2014Sheeraz just cracked the door open. But he did it with a performance that made you lean forward and take notes. He didn\u2019t just win. He announced himself.<\/p>\n Sheeraz is now 22-0-1 with 18 knockouts. And he just turned a grudge match into a resume reel.<\/p>\n There\u2019s still polish needed. Still questions to answer. But if this was Sheeraz\u2019s reintroduction, then consider the message received.<\/p>\n Because in boxing, the difference between promise and proof is simple: you either knock the door down or keep knocking. Tonight, Sheeraz didn\u2019t knock. He kicked it off the goddamn hinges.<\/p>\n And Berlanga? He\u2019s going to be pulling Sheeraz\u2019s combinations out of his dreams for months. That\u2019s if he sleeps at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" On a steamy night in Queens where the ghosts of Louis Armstrong and neighborhood street fights seemed to hum in the humid air, Hamzah Sheeraz didn\u2019t just arrive\u2014he detonated. And somewhere between the second knockdown and the referee waving it off like a man tired of watching a car crash, you realized: Sheeraz isn\u2019t the … Read More “Hamzah Sheeraz vs. Edgar Berlanga: A Beatdown in Queens and a Promise Resurrected”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boxing-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-14-at-10.55.18\u202fAM.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18\/revisions\/20"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigtimefighter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}