Frankie Gavin vs. Sam Eggington & Matthew Macklin vs. Jason Welborn on October 17th

By Boxing News - 08/18/2015 - Comments

macklin56By Scott Gilfoid: Former world title challenger Frankie Gavin (22-2, 13 KOs) will be taking his career in reverse mode in his next fight when he faces domestic fighter Sam Eggington (16-2, 9 KOs) on October 17th at the Barclaycard Arena in Birmingham. It’s not surprising that Gavin’s career is being taken backwards step after his recent losses to IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook last May, and Leonard Bundu in 2014.

In between those defeats, Gavin beat a mess of domestic level fighters and proved that he can bet those types of fighters. However, Gavin did have a controversial decision win over Bradley Skeete in 2014, which tells you that Gavin is basically a domestic level fighter himself in terms of boxing skills and talent.

As we saw in Gavin’s loss to Brook, he doesn’t have the punching power to fight at the world level at 147. There was a huge difference in punching power between the two of them and that problem will continue to be there for Gavin for the remainder of his career if he insists on fighting top 15 contenders at 147. Gavin’s loss told me that he either needs to try and move down to 140 to fight in that division or he needs to focus his career at fighting guys just at the domestic level.

Since I seriously doubt that Gavin can ever fight at 140 due to him struggling to make 147, I think he’s going to have to focus his career in fighting local lads in domestic level clashes rather than fighting at a world level and doing the best he can in those types of fights.

At this point I’m not even sure that Gavin can beat a fighter like Eggington. I mean, Eggington has a tiny bit of pop in his punches, and that might be enough for him to dominate the likes of Gavin, who can’t punch at all.

Eggington has recent wins over Glenn Foot, Joseph Lamptey, and Shayne Singleton. Eggington clearly isn’t a world level fighter, which makes him perfect for Gavin. Eggington holds the Commonwealth and WBC International Silver 147lb titles, both of which will be up for grabs in his fight against Gavin. Those are obviously not world level straps, but I’m sure Gavin will be happy to be fighting for them. It’s better for Gavin to be fighting for these level straps than for nothing at all.

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Also on the card is three times middleweight world title challenger Matthew Macklin facing Jason Welborn (17-3, 6 KOs) in a fight that will take place in the 154lb division. Macklin has fought for world titles three times and he’s failed each time. I don’t know why Macklin kept getting additional chances after his first failure against former WBA middleweight champion Felix Sturm in 2011. I could see from that fight that Macklin didn’t have the talent to win a world title at 160. But the WBA and WBC let Macklin fight for their world titles and he failed.

Macklin’s career appears to be sinking in quicksand right now with him having been beaten by Jorge Sebastian Heiland by a 10th round knockout in 2014, Gennady Golovkin, Sergio Martinez and Felix Sturm. Macklin did win his last fight against little known Sandor Micsko by a 2nd round stoppage win last May, but it was a weak opponent.

What was really troubling is that Macklin had to struggle to defeat little known Jose Yebes by an eight round decision last year. That fight kind of told you that Macklin doesn’t have the talent to fight at the world level. I mean, if he can’t even conclusively beat a fighter at the level of Yebes, then where does Macklin belong? I certainly don’t think he belongs at the world level.

What’s interesting about this career is how Gavin and Macklin are kind of in the same boat in my view. They’ve both tried fighting at the world level, and both were lashed more than once. Now they’re both back at the domestic level trying to find a bit of success. The only question is will they ever go back up to world level again, and if they do what goals will they have in fighting at that level.

I don’t know how Macklin can ever win a world title at 154 or 160. He’s getting older and I can’t ever see him beating the likes of Andy Lee, Daniel Jacobs, Gennady Golovkin or Miguel Cotto. Further, I don’t see Macklin being able to beat any of the junior middleweight champions like Erislandy Lara or Cornelius Bundrage. With Gavin, he doesn’t have the punching power to compete against the welterweight champions or even the top contenders in the division. I mean, he might be able to beat some of the lower level contenders with inflated resumes and little experience, but that’s about it. I think Macklin and Gavin can carve out a nice little career fighting at the domestic level, but if they keep trying to fight at the world level, I suspect they’ll get slapped down each time and shown that their talent level isn’t high enough for them to be fighting up there.



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