By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn believes that Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions are in awe of the card that he’s put together for the O2 Arena this Saturday on Sky Box Office in London, UK.
In the headliner bout, Hearn has IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook facing Frankie Gavin. Unbeaten heavyweight contender Anthony Joshua is taking on journeyman Kevin Johnson, WBC lightweight champion Jorge Linares faces British challenger Kevin Mitchell, and IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich defends against Lee Selby. There’s a bunch of other fights on the card like former WBO cruiserweight champion Nathan Cleverly facing Tomas Man, and middleweights John Ryder and Nick Blackwell facing each other.
“Top Rank and Golden Boy are here and they’re all saying the same thing: ‘Wow. Seven hours of championship boxing, three world title fights and four Brits involved in those fights,” Hearn said to Skysports.com.
I don’t know if Top Rank and Golden Boy are necessarily impressed with all the match-ups, but I think they might be impressed with the names that Hearn has accumulated on the card. As far as I’m concerned, there are two good fights in the major portion of the card between Selby and Gradovich and Mitchell vs. Linares. But I see Joshua-Johnson and Brook-Gavin as mismatches. Cleverly vs. Man is a mismatch as well. The other fights like Ryder vs. Blackwell and Scott Cardle vs. Craig Evans are decent bouts. However, those aren’t fighters that people are paying to see. The fans are paying to see the likes of Joshua-Johnson and Brook-Gavin, and those fights are mismatches.
Hearn could have done a heck of a lot better had he looked to match Brook and Joshua against live bodies rather than finding easy marks for them. I’d like to have seen Joshua face someone like Lucas Browne, Carlos Takam, Andy Ruiz, Tony Thompson, Bermane Stiverne, Chris Arreola or Kubrat Pulev. In other words, throw Joshua in the deep end in a sink or swim manner. If he drowns, then you know at least that he’s not the real deal and you can then put him in with domestic level guys for the remainder of his career.
Brook shouldn’t be fighting someone like Gavin. If Brook wants the bigger names like Amir Khan, Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao to fight him, then he needs to be fighting the likes of Marcos Maidana, Keith Thurman, Lucas Matthysse, Robert Guerrero, Shawn Porter, Tim Bradley and Diego Chaves. I don’t know why Brook isn’t be put in with those guys. We’re seeing Brook fight lower level guys like Gavin, Jo Jo Dan, Alvaro Robles, Vyacheslav Senchenko and Carson Jones. With that kind of resume, it’s no Wonder Brook is being ignored by Khan each time he complains about not getting a big fight.
Comments are closed.