By Scott Gilfoid: With his hoped for unification fight against IBF super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton now off the table, WBA 122 pound belt holder Scott Quigg (30-0-2, 22 KOs) is reportedly will be facing former IBF 122lb champion Kiko Martinez (32-5, 24 KOs) in the summer in a fight that will take place on July 18th at the Manchester Arena.
As bad as Quigg has looked in some of his past fights against the likes of Yoandris Salinas, I wouldn’t be surprised if Martinez takes this fight. Quigg is definitely a shaky champion with decent but far from great skills. Martinez has to be seen as a live dog in this fight.
I mean, I don’t even know if you can call the 29-year-old Martinez an underdog in this fight because he’s got better power than Quigg in my view, and I rate him as having the better skills. As such, I see this as a 50-50 fight.
Anthony Crolla is someone that could also wind up on the card against an opponent still to be determined. Crolla hasn’t fought since last November, and I wouldn’t expect him to be put in with a live body for this fight. He’s had too much time off, and I doubt that he’ll be risked by putting him in with a talented fighter.
Frampton turned down a huge offer of £1.5m from Quigg’s promoter Eddie Hearn.
Frampton said that the offer was too low, as he’s looking for a considerably higher number than that to take the fight. It’ll be interesting to see if Frampton receives anything close to that amount in defending his IBF title against the largely obscure opposition that the International Boxing Federation has ranked in their top 15.
Apart from the Quigg fight, Frampton could face WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux if he wanted to impress the fans and get a nice payday, but thus far Frampton has shown zero interest in wanting to get inside the ring with Rigondeaux. I suspect that’ll change once the 34-year-old Rigondeaux ages some more and starts looking like a shot fighter. I don’t know what Frampton stands to gain by saying no to the Quigg fight now. I doubt that the money offer will be any bigger in the future, and the only thing that will be accomplished is that both fighters will slowly age in facing the obscure opposition that their sanctioning bodies has ranking in the top 15.
Quigg has been dealing with a hand injury that has kept him out of the ring since last year in November when he defeated little known fighter Hidenori Otake by a 12 round decision.
The knock on Quigg is that he’s really been matched softly since he picked up the WBA title in being elevated as the WBA champion outside the ring last September. Since being given the title, Quigg has defended it five times successfully in beating Yoandris Salinas, Diego Oscar Silva, Tshifhiwa Munyai, Stephane Jamoye and Hidenori Otake. What’s interesting about Quigg is that his opposition has gotten worse instead of better in the past year, and it’s pretty disturbing given that he could fix that just by taking on Rigondeaux, the WBA Super World super bantamweight champion.
Rigondeaux is looking to push the WBA to force Quigg to face him. Thus far, the WBA hasn’t ordered the fight, but they’re going to do that in the future and Quigg will need to make a decision about whether he likes the WBA title enough to face what many boxing fans see as the best fighter in the super bantamweight division in Rigondeaux. My guess is we’ll see Quigg vacate his WBA title rather than facing Rigondeaux and losing badly.
Comments are closed.