Things you didn’t know about Danny Dignum’s next opponent Gino Kanters
On December 2, MTK host the finals of their Golden Contract featherweight and light-heavyweight tournaments at the Production Park TV studios in Wakefield.
Jazza Dickens vs Ryan Walsh in the featherweight finale is one of the most anticipated fights of this year, and the light-heavyweight decider between Ricards Bolotniks and once-beaten Serge Michel should also be an intriguingly close contest.
Not only that, MTK Global have laid on another exciting 50-50 match-up between super-lightweights Daniel Egbunike (6-0) and Harlem Eubank (10-0), who are 16 fights unbeaten between them.
Unbeaten middleweight powerhouse Danny Dignum (13-0, 7KOs), who has two back-to-back KOs in WBO European title fights, has just been added to the bill against Dutch national champion Gino Kanters (8-3-2, 3KOs).
Kanters has fought in the UK a few times already but not that much is known about the Dutchman still, so BBN decided to dig up some interesting facts about him:
Born on October 12, 1996, Sergino Kanters is currently just 24-years-old.
He was born and raised in Purmerend in the province of North Holland, Netherlands, part of the Randstad, which is one of the largest conurbations in Europe.
He was originally introduced to combat sports by his former stepfather. Initially, he had plans to become a lawyer after he finished school.
Kanters trained at Legends Gym and became a professional kickboxer at just 17-years-old and achieved world championship honours in Muay Thai and kickboxing when fighting within organisations such as Enfusion and Kunlan.
He is 178cm tall, which is just over 5ft 10”.
In his pro debut, on his 19th birthday, he competed in a four-man 70kg tournament at the Theter Carre in Amsterdam, where he defeated fellow debutant Karem El Hahaoui in the semi-final, followed by victory over Othman Allach (1-2) in the final. Neither one of those boxers ever fought again.
Almost two years later, he returned to step up against an 8-2 winning fighter in Josemir Poulino, who was a Dutch and BeNeLux middleweight champion. Kanters defeated the titlist 39-37 in a four-rounder in Amsterdam.
He fought him again in Poulino’s next fight in 2018 to win the Dutch middleweight title from him with a third-round TKO.
In between those fights, Kanters fought three times, losing twice. His first career defeat was in his fourth fight to Gevorg Khatchikan (29-3, 14KOs), who went 11 rounds with James DeGale when he was 17-1, the 12-round distance with former WBO World super-middleweight champion Gilberto Ramirez (40-0, 26KOs), and challenged for the European title.
His second defeat was to Briton Kieran Conway (15-1-1, 3KOs) on the Amir Khan vs Samuek Vargas undercard in Birmingham. He was defeated 37-40 in a four-rounder, but Kanters still claims to this day that he won the fight and was hard done by on the scorecards.
He fought in another Matchroom show just two months after his match with Conway when he held 2-0 prospect Dmytro Mytrofanov to a draw on the undercard of the Oleksandr Usyk vs Tony Bellew undercard in Manchester. The Ukrainian is now unbeaten in 10 bouts, and Kanters remans the only opponent to inflict a knockdown on him in the pro ranks. Kanters is still equally appalled at the scoring of that fight too.
His performance against the Rio 2016 Olympian led him to sign contracts with MTK Global and he made his MTK Global debut against Nelson Altamirano (10-36-3, 6KOs) in March 2019 at the Brentwood Centre.
His aggressive style and power punching soon earned him the nickname ‘Mini Mike Tyson’. He is also known as ‘The Dutch Destroyer’.
He had his third and fourth fight in England in March and May 2019 on MTK Global shows at the Brentwood Centre in Essex, training under Adam Hart. His teammate Liam Wells (7-1, 2KOs) was thoroughly impressed with Kanters in the gym and said he looked up to him for all that he had achieved in kickboxing and boxing.
Kanters challenged for a second title in August 2019, when he competed for the vacant WBC Youth World middleweight title in Switzerland against unbeaten Swiss Ramadan Hiseni (13-0, 4KOs), but lost 98-92 on all three judges scorecards.
He bounced back with an eight-round unanimous decision victory over Czech champion Anatoli Hunanyan (9-6-1, 5KOs) in November 2019, then he was held to a draw with undefeated German Timo Rost (10-0-2, 3KOs) in June this from the away corner in Germany.
He currently boasts just three losses from 13 bouts, a 23% KO ratio, with 69 rounds of experience in the bag, and is ranked by BoxRec as the second-best middleweight in the Netherlands. His forthcoming clash with Danny Dignum will serve as his fifth fight in the UK.
He counts Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davies as his inspiration in boxing.
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