Arum says no to Yuriorkis Gamboa vs. Mikey Garcia fight

By Boxing News - 03/12/2014 - Comments

gamboa434By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has shut down any chance of having his fighter Mikey Garcia (34-0, 28 KO’s) face unbeaten Cuban Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-0, 16 KO’s) in the near future. Arum doesn’t want to let the Mikey-Gamboa fight take place because Gamboa walked out on a fight against one of Arum’s Top Rank stable fighters Brandon Rios two years ago.

Gamboa was supposed to fight Rios, but he failed to show at the press conference to announce the fight. Arum then had to get Richard Abril to face Rios. In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing that Gamboa chose not to take the fight against Rios, because Abril was totally robbed after dominating Rios over 12 rounds. Rios appeared to win 1 round of the fight, yet the judges gave him the decision. Had it been Gamboa in there against Rios, it’s hard to see him doing any better than Abril did, as he really made Rios look bad.

When asked if Gamboa and Mikey Garcia would fight, Arum told the sweetscience “It’s not gonna happen. Who the eff is Gamboa? He effed me in the Rios fight.”

Instead of putting Mikey in with Gamboa, Arum is interested in matching him against WBA super featherweight champion Takashi Uchiyama. That’s a good fight, because Uchiyama is considered by some hardcore fans to be the best fighter in the super featherweight division. However, it’s not a fight that would interest casual boxing fans the same way a Mikey vs. Gamboa fight would.

As good as Uchyama is, he’s a complete unknown in terms of being known by casual boxing fans. Gamboa is better known by far. If Arum is going to hold a grudge and not make the Gamboa-Mikey fight simply because Gamboa walked away from a fight against Rios, then Arum is only going to be hurting himself and Mikey in the process.

Mikey needs the Gamboa fight in order to win over boxing fans, because he’s not going to be able to do that by fighting likes of Uchiyama, Juan Carlos Burgos and Roman Martinez. He’s got to fight better known opponents, and he needs to move up in weight to the lightweight division because the general fans of the sport don’t have clue one who the top super featherweights are. Arum might as well be matching Garcia with anyone off the street, because the fans would care about the same. A Mikey-Uchiyama fight might do well in Japan, but it won’t register in the U.S. Even in Japan, I doubt the fight would be a b ig deal because boxing isn’t a big deal in Japan.

Arum could wind up matching Mikey Garcia up against his No.1 money fighter Manny Pacquiao in the near future. That fight will do about as well as Rios vs. Pacquiao unless Arum starts putting Mikey in with well known fighters like Gamboa instead of the obscure guys that he’d been matching hi up against. Arum needs to see the bottom line when it comes to match-making. It doesn’t matter if he was burned in the past by Gamboa. He still needs him to help make Mikey a more popular fighter. Arum can’t do it on the cheap by matching Mikey against guys like Uchiyama and expecting casual fans in the U.S to get excited about the fight.



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