By Dan Ambrose: The Showtime televised Miguel Cotto (37-3, 30 KO’s) vs. WBA World junior middleweight champion Austin Trout (25-0, 14 KO’s) undercard on December 1st is really hurting in a big way as the fight approaches. As of now the undercard has the following fights: Daniel Jacobs vs. TBA and Jayson Velez vs. TBA. That’s dreadful.

I know it’s not a pay per view card but they got to do a little better than this. IBF featherweight champion Billy Dib was supposed to be defending his title against Velez but he apparently is no longer on the card. Even if he was on the card it’s still not much of an undercard.

Dib isn’t well known in the U.S, so it wouldn’t have been a big deal even if he had been fighting. Of course, the attention here would be on the Puerto Rican Velez, as the fight card is taking place at New York’s Madison Square Garden and there will be a huge amount of Puerto Rican fans attending the fight as well as watching it on Showtime. But that’s not going to happen now. And having the 25-year-old Jacobs fighting on the undercard isn’t enough because he’s only fought once in the past year and half and it’s obvious that his opponent won’t be anyone too good because they’re not going to risk putting Jacobs in with a really good fighter at this point and end up with him getting knocked out again.

Jacobs looked really rusty in his comeback win last month against Josh Luteran at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. His handlers aren’t going to put him in with anyone remotely good that can send his boxing comeback crashing to defeat. The Jacobs fight is scheduled for 8 rounds, so you can expect a 2nd or more likely a 3rd tier opponent to be dug up shortly. Given that there’s only 2 1/2 weeks before the fight it’s not hard to imagine that Jacobs’ opponent will be someone WAY out of his league.

The Cotto-Trout fight is expected to do all the heavy lifting for this card and I just hope it turns out to be an exciting one because what a disappointment it’ll be if it turns out boring. The undercard looks like it’ll be filled with mismatches, so they can’t count on that making up for what boxing fans don’t get to see in the main event in terms of excitement.