Oscar Duarte and Kenneth Sims Jnr will tangle Saturday in Chicago to determine who is the better man in the ring, but at Friday’s weigh-in outside the Richard J. Daley Center the two fighters were equals on the scales.
Duarte and Sims both weighed in at 139.8lbs for their 12-round junior welterweight main event at Credit Union 1 Arena, set to stream live on DAZN at 7 p.m. CT.
Duarte, 29-2-1 (23 KOs), from Parral, Mexico, has had numerous verbal tussles with Sims, 22-2-1 (8 KOs), in the fight lead-up, and he didn’t tone down the rhetoric Friday after the fighters made weight.
“I feel fear, I see fear,” Duarte said through a translator after a long staredown with Sims, “and I'm ready to get going.”
Sims, making the first professional appearance of his career in his Chicago hometown, was equally biting with his final words ahead of Saturday’s fight.
“I'm extremely confident,” he said. “I'm better than him. That's it, that's the end. At the end of the day, I'm better than him. He can't do nothing with me. He gonna get embarrassed tomorrow.”
In the co-feature, former world titleholders Regis Prograis, 29-3 (24 KOs), and Joseph “JoJo” Diaz, 34-7-1 (15 KOs), will meet in what even Prograis – a once-elite fighter who has lost his last two bouts – agreed will be a crossroads fight.
“We both want to just prove ourselves,” Prograis said. “And so I think it could be the one that steals the show tomorrow.”
Full weigh-in results are as follows:
12 rounds – Junior welterweight
Oscar Duarte (139.8lbs) vs. Kenneth Sims Jnr (139.8lbs)
10 rounds – Welterweight
Regis Prograis (142.0lbs) vs. Joseph Diaz (142.2lbs)
10 rounds – Cruiserweight
Tristan Kalkreuth (198.6lbs) vs. Devonte Williams (196.2lbs)
Six rounds – Heavyweight
Joshua Edwards (228.0lbs) vs. Cayman Audie (242.0lbs)
Eight rounds – Light heavyweights
Yair Gallardo (175.0lbs) vs. Quinton Rankin (174.0lbs)
Eight rounds – Junior featherweight
Gael Cabrera (123.6lbs) vs. Richard Reyes Diaz (123.2lbs)
Six rounds – Lightweight
Mehki Phillips (133.8lbs) vs. Joseph Cruz Brown (134.6lbs)
Jason Langendorf is the former Boxing Editor of ESPN.com, was a contributor to Ringside Seat and the Queensberry Rules, and has written about boxing for Vice, The Guardian, Chicago Sun-Times and other publications. A member of the Boxing Writers Association of America, he can be found at LinkedIn and followed on X and Bluesky.
