By Luis Sandoval

Things didn’t go as planned for Ruslan Provodnikov this past June when he suffered a split decision loss to Chris Algieri. He was favored in the fight and a victory over Algieri was supposed to lead to a big name fight for the Russian fighter.

Now its Algieri who has a date set with Manny Pacquiao in Macau China on November 22nd as Provodnikov patiently waits for his next fight to be finalized. There have been a few names being tossed around but up until now, nothing concrete has been reported.

When BoxingScene spoke to Provodnikov’s trainer Freddie Roach, he informed that the list of fighters had come down to only two.

“It looks like Ruslan’s next fight will be against either [Luis Carlos] Abregu or the guy that beat him [the first time Mauricio] Herrera. It will be one of those two,” said Roach.

Abregu is a hard hitting Argentinean who has been on a 7 fight win streak since losing to Timothy Bradley back in 2010. He handed highly touted Puerto Rican Thomas Dulorme his first loss by stopping him in the 7th round and has moved his way back up the ranks.

Herrera beat Provodnikov back in 2011 in an upset on ESPN and his style has given other top fighters trouble as many felt Herrera did enough to deserve the victory over Danny Garcia earlier this year.

Freddie informed things as just getting finalized but he’s pretty sure Provodnikov will be facing his old nemesis next.

“His promoter Artie Pellulo is just going back and forth a little bit and I think we’re very close to making the decision right now. And since Abregu is too big at 147 and he won’t fight at a catch weight, I think Herrera is going to be the fight. I’m pretty sure” informed Roach.

You can follow Luis Sandoval on Twitter & Instagram @Truewest007