By Dan Ambrose: Former three division world champ Abner Mares (29-1-1, 15 KOs) and unbeaten but totally untested WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (30-0-1, 17 KOs) could be facing each other next month on August 29th at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California.
The fighters have verbally agreed to the fight, according to the LA Times. However, they still need to put pen to paper to sign the contracts. Until they’ve signed you have to look at the fight as tentative.
This is a big step up for both fighters, as they’ve been matched against weaker opposition in the last couple of years.
“I can’t wait. It’s the fight everyone has wanted for me,” Santa Cruz said to the latimes.com.
Both Santa Cruz and Mares are kind of in the same boat as far as the weak match-making that they’ve had done for them lately. It didn’t used to be that way with Mares. At one time, he always fought the best in winning world titles at bantamweight, super bantamweight and featherweight.
Mares always fought the best. But after a 1st round knockout loss to Jhonny Gonzalez in 2013, Mares has since been backed off completely from fighting world class opposition and has had three easy fights against Jonathan Oquendo, Jose Ramirez and Arturo Santos Reyes.
The result is Mares has burned up two years of his pro career, he’s now 29, and he has nothing to show for the last two years of his career. Considering how short the careers are for fighters in the lighter weight classes, it was perhaps a huge mistake on Mares’ part to just ease off completely in facing the best fighters for a 2 year period. He wasn’t retired or inactive during the last two years, but he might as well have been because he’s been matched so weakly.
Santa Cruz is a little younger a 26, but he was backed off from facing serious competition in 2013 as well, and he hasn’t fought a good opponent since his win over Cesar Seda in 2013. In Santa Cruz’s last four fights, he’s beaten Jose Cayetano, Jesus Ruiz, Manuel Roman and Christian Mijares. With the fans that Santa Cruz has lost in his last four fights, he has a long steep hill he has to climb to get back what he lost by going soft these past two years.
It’s nice that he could be facing Mares next month in August, but even if Santa Cruz wins the fight, if he goes back to facing the same old weak jobs that he was doing, which you have to figure he’ll be doing, he’ll continue to lose more and more fans in the future.
Mares might be too much of a step up for Santa Cruz, as he tends to fight a lot on the inside. Mares is capable of doing a lot different things in the ring, and he’s got the better hand speed, movement and defensive skills compared to Santa Cruz. The only kind of fighter that Mares is vulnerable against are huge punchers like Jhonny Gonzalez. Santa Cruz isn’t that kind of a puncher. He’s someone who needs his opponent to stand in front of him all night long so that he can bludgeon them with heavy shots one after another in order to wear them down.
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