DonBy Chris Williams: Bob Arum of Top Rank really scrimped on picking out talent for the April 13th undercard fight between WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire (31-1, 20 KO’s) and WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux at the Radio City Music Hall, in New York, New York, USA.
Arum just loaded the undercard with prospects and nothing else, and a lot of the guys may never make out of the prospects/fringe contender stage.
Here’s the undercard for the Rigondeaux-Donaire fight:
Mikael Zewski vs. Daniel Sostre
Sean Monaghan vs. Dion Stanley
Glen Tapia vs. Joseph de los Santos
Felix Verdejo vs. Steve Gutierrez
Jesse Hart vs. Marlon Farr
Toka Kahn Clary vs. Gadiel Andaluz
Dario Soccia vs. Tyler Canning
Erick De Leon vs. Diamond Baier
That’s just not interesting at all for me. I know most of them won’t make it on television in this HBO televised card, but you’d at least hope that Arum would stack the undercard with at least two decent fights for the crowd that are purchasing tickets to see it live in New York.
The way Arum has it set up, the boxing fans are going to be paying to see one fight with recognizable fighters in Donaire vs. Rigondeaux with the rest of them being obscure fighters that may or may not ever pan out.
I’m just wondering which undercard fights Golden Boy will be televising along with the Donaire-Rigondeaux card. I guess the Zewski v. Sostre fight. I don’t know about you but I see that as an ESPN2 worthy fight, but not a main event ESPN2 fight, an undercard fight.
Hopefully the Donaire vs. Rigondeaux fight goes at least 10 rounds because if it ends in one or two rounds, HBO will likely show three or four of the undercard fights and that could end up being really bad television. I guess it’s a win-win situation for Arum because his obscure prospects will get valuable television time, but for boxing fans looking for recognizable talent, they’ll likely be disappointed.
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