Mares vs. Ponce De Leon to be co-feature on Mayweather-Guerrero card on May 4th

By Boxing News - 03/01/2013 - Comments

mares34By Chris Williams: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is moving the featherweight bout between WBC featherweight champion Daniel Ponce De Leon (44-4, 35 KO’s) vs. Abner Mares (25-0-1, 13 KO’s) to the co-feature position on the May 4th Floyd Mayweather vs. Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero card on Showtime/CBS pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The Mares-De Leon fight was previously scheduled for April 20th at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. Schaefer needed to move the fight from this date due to WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, who was supposed to be the co-feature on the Mayweather-Guerrero card against WBA junior middleweight champion Austin Trout, decided to pull out of the card after Mayweather decided not to sign for a fight against him in September.

Mares vs. De Leon is a decent fight, but hardly a great one. De Leon has already been exposed by Yuriorkis Gamboa, Adrien Broner, Celestino Caballero and Juan Manuel Lopez, and the fact that he’s currently the WBC featherweight champion is more of an indication of how weak the featherweight division is right now than it does about him being a top fighter.

De Leon clearly isn’t the best fighter at featherweight or even close to being the best. Mares should win the fight for what it’s worth. I’d prefer to see Mares fight WBO featherweight champion Mikey Garcia than De Leon because that’s not an interesting fight.

I’m not sure if Mares-De Leon is a big enough fight to pull in many fans to purchase the Mayweather-Guerrero fight card on May 4th. It comes down to whether boxing fans like the Mares-De Leon fight enough to want to pay to see it. I don’t think too many people will be willing to pay $60 to see this fight. It’s not the fight that boxing fans want to see. They want to see Mares fight Nonito Donaire or Mikey Garcia, not a guy like De Leon who gets beaten every time he steps up against really quality fighters.



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