By Allan Fox: This Saturday night #4 WBA Daniel Jacobs (27-1, 24 KOs) will be facing #2 WBA Jarrod Fletcher (18-1, 10 KOs) in a fight for the vacant WBA World middleweight title on Showtime at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York, USA.

This is Jacob’s best chance at winning a world title right now. He doesn’t match up well against WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, and getting a fight against WBO champ Peter Quillin or WBC champ Miguel Cotto might prove difficult.

Fletcher, 30, has the kind of boxing skills that could give Jacobs problems if he’s not able to get in range to throw his powerful combinations. Fletcher likes to stay on the outside and control the action with his jab, and he doesn’t leave many openings unless he’s pressured like he was in his loss to Billy Joe Saunders in 2012.

Fletcher has won his last 6 fights and looked good in beating the likes of Max Bursak, Randy Suico and Tim Kanofski. There’s no big names on Fletcher’s resume as far as his wins, aside from his victory over Bursak. But he’s plenty capable of giving Jacobs huge problems if he can stay on the outside and jab without getting hit too frequently.

Jacobs, 27, is coming into this fight with a 7-fight winning streak after getting stopped in the 5th round by Dmitry Pirog in 2010. Jacobs hasn’t beaten anyone that you can call a really good fighter, but he’s got a couple of victories over Giovanni Lorenzo and Milton Nunez.
If he can beat Fletcher, Jacobs says he wants to go after the big names in the division.

He’s mentioned seeing flaws in the game of Golovkin that he feels that he could exploit if he were to fight him, but that’s not a fight that would likely be on top of his list.

Jacobs will very likely choose to defend his title for a while and if a big fight against someone like Peter Quillin or Miguel Cotto were to fall into his lap, he’d obviously take it. Cotto isn’t going to face Jacobs unfortunately. But Quillin is definitely someone that Jacobs has a chance of fighting in the future.