By Chris Williams: Earlier today the undercard for the April 12th pay-per-view bout between Manny Pacquiao and Tim Bradley was revealed by Dan Rafael of ESPN, and I’ve got to say this undercard is really lacking in a huge way. I thought that the undercard for Pacquiao’s last fight against Brandon Rios was a bad one last November, but this one is about the same, if not worse. As bad as this undercard is, I wouldn’t be surprised if this card brings in lower pay-per-view buys than Pacquiao’s last fight against Brandon Rios. That fight card brought in 475,000, and I wasn’t surprised at all at those low numbers because there were no big fights on the undercard to make up for the poor main event fight between Pacquiao and Bradley.
I guess it depends on what your tastes are in wanting to pay $60-75, but for me I don’t see one fight on the Pacquiao-Bradley II undercard that I’m remotely interested in seeing. And I definitely don’t see any fights on the undercard I’d be interested in paying to see.
The problem with Top Rank not stacking the undercard for the Pacquiao vs. Bradley II rematch – or for any of Pacquiao’s fights – is that it creates less interest in seeing his fights, because he’s frequently involved in fighting re-tread opponents. Pacquiao isn’t fighting new and/or exciting fighters that would make up for a poor undercard, so it makes it imperative that Top Rank stack the undercard to make up for what fans aren’t getting in the main event with Pacquiao.
According to ESPN, here are the main three fights on undercard fights for Pacquiao’s rematch with Bradley on April 12th:
1. WBA light welterweight champion Khabib Allakhverdiev (19-0, 9 KO’s) vs. Jesse Vargas (23-0, 9 KO’s)
2. Bryan Vasquez (32-1, 17 KO’s) vs. Jose Felix Jr. (26-0-1, 12 KO’s) [junior lightweights]
3. Raymundo Beltran (28-6-1, 17 KO’s) vs. Roman Martinez (27-2-2, 16 KO’s) [lightweight].
Bob Arum of Top Rank isn’t sure which of these three fights will be the co-feature on the card, according to Rafael. It’s going to likely be Beltran-Martinez or Allakhverdiev-Vargas.
Maybe it’s me, but I’m not excited at all in seeing any of those fights. The only one that is slightly interesting is the Beltran vs. Martinez fight, but even that’s not an appealing one due to Roman Martinez moving up in weight from the super featherweight division to take the fight. Martinez was knocked out by Mikey Garcia in the 8th round in his last fight last November. The idea behind the Beltran-Martinez fight is that it’s supposed to be a WBO lightweight eliminator bout with the winner becoming the mandatory challenger to WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns.
We already saw Beltran lose a controversial decision to Burns in his last fight, and it’s disappointing that he has to fight eliminator just to get a rematch. It just doesn’t seem right to me that Beltran would be fighting a super featherweight coming off of a loss in an eliminator. If Arum wants to match Beltran up with someone in an eliminator bout, then why can’t he fight an actual lightweight for him to fight, and preferably not someone coming off of a loss. Of course, Roman Martinez is a Top Rank fighter, so the fight with Beltran makes sense for that reason. It doesn’t make sense to me though, because eliminator fights should be done between guys who are winning and not between two fighters coming off of losses with one of them not even a lightweight.
I’ve seen WBA light welterweight champion Khabib Allakhverdiev fight before, and I wasn’t impressed at all with what I saw of him. Some boxing fans see him as a paper champion, and it’s hard disagree with that opinion based on what I’ve seen of him. I’m not impressed with his opponent Jesse Vargas. He jabs and moves constantly, and I’ve never seen one fight of his that was interesting to watch.
The undercard will obviously have more fights added to it, but those will be the off TV fights that won’t be seen by the PPV audience.
Here’s what Pacquiao’s undecard was for his last fight against Brandon Rios last November:
Evgeny Gradovich vs. Billy Dib
Andy Ruiz Jr vs. Tor Hamer
Ik Yang vs. Hero Tito
Zou Shiming vs. Juan Tozcano
Felix Verdejo vs. Duanaaymukdahan Petchsamuthr
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