By Chris Williams: If you’re one of the many boxing fans who will be purchasing the April 12th Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley 2 rematch on HBO pay per view, you might not be too happy with what you’re going to be getting for your hard-earned money in looking at the undercard fights. If you don’t care at all about what fights are on the undercard, then this isn’t too much of a worry for you. But for boxing fans paying $70 to see the Pacquiao-Bradley 2 rematch, they not be too happy at seeing the absence of appealing fights on the undercard.
The Top Rank promoted Pacquiao vs. Bradley 2 card isn’t the only one that is less than impressive. Golden Boy Promotions has a couple of cards coming up on April 26th and May 3rd that has undercards that is largely filled with mismatches between known stars against lesser guys.
With the fights they have on the Pacquiao-Bradley 2 undercard, they might as well just cut the entire undercard and go with just the Pacquiao-Bradley fight as the only bout on the card. HBO could show reruns of Pacquiao’s past fights as the undercard and it would be more interesting for fans.
Here are the fights on the Pacquiao-Bradley 2 undercard:
Raymundo Beltran vs Roman Martinez: This is the co-feature on the card, and it’s difficult to see how this fight is a good enough one to be a co-feature given that Beltran (28-6-1, 17 KO’s) is coming off of a 12 round draw against former WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns, and Martinez is coming off of an 8th round knockout loss to Mikey Garcia. How do you make this a co-feature with two guys that are coming off of the performances that they did? It’s very confusing to see what Bob Arum of Top Rank was thinking about in putting this fight on the Pacquiao card.
I wouldn’t mind seeing these guys fight in an exhibition bout, but not in a real fight, and definitely not on PPV. Martinez is a super featherweight who is being moved up to fight the lightweight Beltran. It’s not interesting to me. Bob Arum should have matched Beltran against WBO lightweight champion Terrence Crawford instead of the recently knocked out Martinez.
Bryan Vasquez vs. Jose Felix Jr: This is a fight for the interim WBA World super featherweight title. I think it’s a decent fight, but not good enough to have it on the PPV portion of the Pacquiao-Bradley fight card. Vazquez (32-1, 17 KO’s) was recently knocked out by Takashi Uchiyama in the 8th round in 2012. With a loss like that, he should be still working his way up to a title shot. Felix Jr. (26-0-1, 21 KO’s) still hasn’t faced anyone good yet in his career. This isn’t a PPV worthy fight in my view.
Khabib Allakhverdiev vs. Jessie Vargas: WBA/IBO light welterweight champion Allakhverdiev (19-0, 9 KO’s), who a lot of boxing fans see as a paper champion, makes a title defense against the Top Rank promoted Vargas (23-0, 9 KO’s) in a fight that could end up putting fight fans to sleep. Both guys have a less than crowd pleasing fighting style, and I can see this one turning into a dull clinch-filled fight that will have boxing fans booing like made by the 6th round. I don’t see this as a PPV worthy fight, and I wouldn’t even be interested in seeing it on regular HBO.
Off TV fights on the card:
Sean Monaghan vs. Joe McCreedy
Oscar Valdez vs. Dat Nguyen
Esquiva Falcao vs. TBA 6
Oleksandr Gvozdyk vs. Mike Montoya
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