By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton gave WBA champ Scott Quigg a not so subtle reminder that if he wants to put a fight together against him, he’s going to have to recognize that he’s the A-side in the equation.
Frampton wants Quigg to know this ahead of time so that if/when Quigg and his promoter Eddie Hearn decide to start negotiating with him, his manager Barry McGuigan and adviser Al Haymon, he’ll need to not try and ask for too much at the negotiating table.
“The message is bring it on if you want, but remember who’s the A-side fighter here,” Frampton said to BBC Radio. “When you come to negotiate you can’t be making too many demands.”
Frampton didn’t say what he considered “too many demands”, but it seems likely that Quigg asking for a purse split approaching 50-50 might be considered going overboard with the negotiations.
Frampton really hasn’t had any fight that you can call a major fight as of yet. Unless he considers his two fights against Kiko Martinez as a major blockbuster fight, I think Frampton is still without a major fight under his belt. As such, it’s hard to take him seriously as calling the shots when the guy still hasn’t faced the best fighter or even the second best fighter in the 122lb division.
I don’t rate Kiko Martinez as even the third best fighter at super bantamweight. It would be nice of Frampton fought the top guy Guillermo Rigondeaux, and then followed that up with fights against Nonito Donaire, Leo Santa Cruz, and Abner Mares. Then I could see Frampton as calling the shots in the negotiations. But right now, Frampton only has the two fights against Kiko Martinez that he can brag about, and that’s nothing to get excited about.
“If he really wants the fight I’m happy to fight him in his own backyard, but we just need to remember who’s the boss when it comes to negotiating,” Frampton said.
I get the feeling that a Frampton-Quigg fight won’t be happening anytime soon, if ever. If Frampton is going to come across like he’s the boss in the negotiations, then I can’t see how the fight can ever get made. Frampton isn’t exactly young at 28. For a small guy, that’s pretty old, and I don’t think Frampton is going to be able to keep making weight for the 122lb division without it hurting him and his performances.
We already saw Frampton look less than impressive in his last fight against Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. last Saturday night in El Paso, Texas. Frampton was knocked down twice and hurt in the 9th round. If that was because of the difficulty he’s having in getting down in weight to super bantamweight, then I can definitely see these problems continuing into the future.
“It’s not as if I’ve suddenly had a growth spurt. I think I stopped growing when i was about 12 years old,” Frampton said. “I’m a career super-bantamweight if I want to be – I just misjudged things a little bit. I can make 8st 10lbs again if I have to – it’s a hard slog to do it, but I’ve done it so many times before.”
I don’t agree with Frampton. Once a fighter starts struggling to make weight, it quite frequently becomes a chronic problem with their body reaching a higher set point for their weight. Yeah, a fighter can diet and do a ton of aerobic type exercises to get back down to the weight they were previously accustomed to fighting at, but they’re often not as strong or as good a fighter at that weight compared to how they once were.
I get the feeling that Frampton is now a featherweight whether he wants to fight in that weight class or not. He can live in denial and continue to melt down – or try to melt down – to 122 to fight against super bantamweights, or he can simply listen to what his body is telling him to do and move up to featherweight or maybe even super featherweight.
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