By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg has a nice little mismatch scheduled for early next month against #10 WBC fringe contender Jose Cayetano on December 10 on the undercard of the heavyweight clash between IBF champion Anthony Joshua and American Eric Molina at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
Quigg vs. Cayetano (20-4, 9 KOs) will be featherweight. The two fighters will battle for the vacant WBA International 126lb title. Quigg (31-1-2, 23 KOs) is moving up in weight to go after bigger fights against Frampton and Lee Selby.
This is the first fight for Quigg since his loss to Carl Frampton last February. Quigg, 28, suffered a broken jaw in the 4th round, but he was able to continue fighting the rest of the way to lose a 12 round split decision.
I was impressed with Quigg. He definitely created the blueprint in how to beat Frampton. I would have liked to have seen what Quigg would have done if he’d pressured Frampton from round one instead of waiting until the 6th to start applying heavy pressure. I don’t attribute Quigg’s loss to Frampton due to the jaw injury he suffered. I think it was more of the case of Quigg not fighting hard enough in the first half of the fight to put Frampton out of his game.
Quigg said this to skysports.com about his fight against Cayetano:
“Jose has mixed in good company, taken Santa Cruz the distance and he’s coming off a good win against Santiago. This is a very good fight coming back from a broken jaw,” said Quigg. “I am not taking this lightly at all, I’ve watched him a lot, he knows what he’s doing…it’s a fight that I have to put in a top performance in and that’s what I am aiming to do.”
This fight is a mismatch. Cayetano is not in the same class as Quigg, and he has nothing in the way of punching power to keep him off. The 29-year-old Cayetano has never been stopped before in his seven-year pro career, but that still doesn’t mean he’s going to win the fight. If Cayetano takes a boatload of punishment from Quigg in going the full 12 round distance, I still see him losing by a one-sided decision.
The 29-year-old Mexican Cayetano has won his last three fights over Alexis Santiago, Roberto Purcheta and Felioe Orucuta. Before that, Cayetano had lost to Leo Santa Cruz by a 10 round decision last year in May 2015, and he also lost to Enrique Bernache and Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. This is the same Gonzalez Jr. that knocked Frampton down twice in their fight in July 2015 in El Paso, Texas. The one knock out Cayetano is he’s not much of a puncher. He’s one of those finesse type guys that wins his fights by decision by boxing his way to a win. Cayetano is obviously going to have problems with the punching power of Santa Cruz if he decides to sit down on his shots in this fight and cut for a knockout.
Quigg will be moving up in weight to the featherweight division to get a rematch against Frampton after his second fight against Leo Santa Cruz, and to go after IBF featherweight champion Lee Selby. Those are two nice money fights for Quigg. Depending on where he fights Frampton, I think he can beat him. However, if Quigg fights Frampton in Belfast or New York, then I can’t see him getting the win unless he knocks Frampton out.
I think Frampton is unbeatable in those areas of the world when it comes to fights going to decision. Frampton appeared to lose his last fight against Leo Santa Cruz on July 30 last summer at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. However, with a huge pro-Frampton crowd cheering his every missed punch, the judges gave Frampton the win by the scores 114-114, 116-112 and 117-111. I had no dog in this hunt, and I simply thought Santa Cruz had done more than enough to get the win over Frampton. But I wasn’t surprised that Frampton got the win, because the boxing fans were cheering exclusively from him in the fight.
When Santa Cruz would land anything, you could hear a pin drop. The fans didn’t make a peep. With judges being human, I think it’s only natural for them to be scoring rounds in which the fans are screaming their heads off for one fighter. It would bad news for Santa Cruz, because he got his first loss of his career in a fight that he arguably should have won. It was even weirder was that Santa Cruz still lost even though he’s the American.
What fans from outside of the U.S don’t realize is that the U.S is a HUGE country, and just because you’re an American doesn’t going to mean you’re going to be popular in all parts of the country. If the fight Frampton vs. Santa Cruz fight had taken place in Southern California where Santa Cruz is from, the fans would have been screaming their heads off for him. If the judges weren’t strong willed and able to shut out fan noise, they might go ahead and score rounds based on cheering rather than what was actually happening inside the ring. Like I said, Santa Cruz appeared to beat Frampton. It was one of those things that you see in boxing with scoring that makes no sense.
The Quigg-Cayetano fight will be part of the televised portion of the card on Sky Sports Box Office pay-per-view for the British boxing fans. The Joshua vs. Molina fight will be piped into the U.S. on Showtime, but it’s unclear whether the Quigg-Cayetano fight will be part of the card will make it on television in the States. If any of the undercard fights are going to make it on U.S. television, I would think it would be the heavyweight clash between Dillian Whyte and Derek Chisora.
What’s interesting is heavyweight contender Luis “King Kong” Ortiz is on the card in a mismatch against British domestic level fighter David Allen. Ortiz’s fights have been televised on HBO in the States. My guess is the Ortiz-Allen fight won’t make it onto the Showtime card to be televised in the U.S. What a pity. The U.S boxing fans can’t see Ortiz fight little known Allen, who is coming off of a one-sided loss to Whyte last summer.