By Jeff Aranow: Bob Arum of Top Rank is pleased with the huge fights between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Vasyl Lomachenko and Guillermo Rigondeaux that are about to take place. Arum feels that the recent Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Conor McGregor fight was a garbage fight.
Arum isn’t connected with the Canelo vs. GGG promotion, as those two fighters are with other promoters. Arum still feels that’s an excellent fight for the boxing world. Arum promotes WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko (9-1, 7 KOs), and he plans on matching him against unbeaten super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (17-0, 11 KOs) on December 9.
Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotion is quite vocal in his criticism of the Mayweather vs. McGregor fight that took place last Saturday night in Las Vegas, Nevada. De La Hoya had already scheduled his fight between Canelo and Golovkin on September 16. Mayweather then placed his fight against UFC fighter McGregor 3 weeks ahead of De La Hoya’s in a move that some boxing fans feel was a way for Mayweather to drive away the interest in that fight. To be sure, the pay-per-view numbers for the Canelo-GGG fight could suffer from having Mayweather’s expensive fight against McGregor directly in front of it. That fight went for $89 to $99 on Showtime PPV in the States. For boxing fans to have to come up with an extra $70 to see Golovkin and Canelo fight just 3 weeks later, the fans might not have the money for to purchase that fight too. It doesn’t matter that the Canelo-Golovkin fight is the far better fight on paper, many of the boxing fans won’t have the means to order that fight too after having blown $100 on Mayweather’s event fight against McGregor. The boxing fans are going to get a lot of value for their money in ordering Canelo-Golovkin on HBO PPV. This isn’t a fight where one fighter is carrying the other for part of the fight, which Mayweather appeared to do with McGregor. Canelo and Golovkin aren’t going to be taking it easy on one another.
I know where Oscar’s coming from. Oscar is promoting a really terrific fight,” said Arum to Fighthub in discussing De La Hoya’s anger at Mayweather staging his fight against McGregor directly in front of the Canelo vs. Triple G fight. ”Really terrific. I have nothing to do with that fight but Golovkin and Canelo, I can’t praise it enough. And then he sees all the furor and all the attention for this piece of garbage and he gets aggravated. I can understand that but somebody should be counseling him to tone it down a little,” said Arum.
The “piece of garbage” that Arum is referring to is Mayweather’s fight against McGregor. To be fair, Mayweather-McGregor was competitive for 4 rounds before it became a predictable one-sided mismatch with a sluggish looking and old Mayweather walking down a very tired looking McGregor down, and hammering him with head shots until the referee Robert Byrd called a halt to the fight in round 10. This was not boxing at it’s finest. It was hard to believe this joke of a fight was on PPV, and even harder to believe the fight counted in the record books for Mayweather’s 50th win. Mayweather was arguably driving boxing into the ground with this terrible fight. You have to feel sorry for all the fans that paid to see this event. McGregor was initially winning the fight in the first 3 rounds, but only because Mayweather’s plan was to do nothing in the early going to let McGregor tire himself out. As such, the only reason why the Mayweather-McGregor fight was competitive early on was because Mayweather took it easy on him. That’s kind of sad though, but it’s what many in the boxing world expected Mayweather to do. He knew he had a mismatch on his hands against a novice fighter in McGregor. If Mayweather had just gone out and massacred McGregor immediately for a quick knockout, he would have been skewered by the media, and scorned by the boxing and MMA fans for ripping them off. So, instead of battering McGregor right off the bat, Mayweather let him have his chance at bat in the early going, before getting serious with him in round 5 and wearing him down until the fight was stopped in round 10.
“Nothing is 100% done until it happens. But it’s going to happen December 9th,” said Arum in discussing he Lomachenko vs. Rigondeaux fight.
Lomachenko vs. Rigondeaux is going to be an excellent fight. It matches 2 Olympic gold medalists against each other. Both are 2-time Olympic gold medalists. The only one detraction for Lomachenko vs. Rigondeaux is the weight for the fight. It’s supposed to take place at 130 pounds at the super featherweight limit. That puts a big strain on the 36-year-old Rigondeaux, who will need to move up 2 weight classes to take the fight against Lomachenko. It’s clear who the A-side is in the fight. When you see one guy having to move up 2 weight classes to fight a bigger fighter without a catch-weight, it suggests there’s a big power imbalance between them when it comes to negotiations. It’s too bad though. If Lomachenko wins, he won’t get as much credit from the knowledgeable boxing fans, who are aware of what Rigondeaux had to go through to get the fight. The casual fans obviously won’t be aware of what Rigondeaux had to do to get the fight with Lomachenko, but those fans likely won’t be impressed with the fight anyway, because they’ll have never heard of Rigondeaux. This is a fight that the hardcore fans will appreciate. To casual fans, it’s just another fight unfortunately. Lomachenko isn’t a big name yet, and his recent fight against Marriaga wasn’t impressive. Lomachenko was doing too much showboating instead of being serious.
“The future of Mexican boxing is alive and well,” said Arum. ”Three weeks from now you have Canelo, who’s a terrific fighter, fighting Triple G, and a week after that we’re going to have two great Mexican champions fighting in Tucson, Arizona — Oscar Valdez who was a member of the Mexican Olympic team and featherweight champion, and Zurdo Ramirez who is one of the best fighters in the world, the super middleweight champion,” said Arum.
Arum has an ESPN card on September 22, headlined by WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez defending his title against #1 WBO mandatory contender Jesse Hart (22-0, 18 KOs) at the Convention Center in Tucson, Arizona. It’s a good fight, but not a great one. Hart almost got knocked out by a journeyman Dashon Johnson last year on March 18. Hart was knocked down in round 10. He still won the fight by a 10 round unanimous decision, but he was exposed by Johnson. The scoring by 2 of the judges was way off from the way that the fight played out. Johnson fought well enough to lose by a round at the most. The judges scored the fight 98-91, 97-92 and 95-94. It was like two of the judges were watching a different fight than the one that took place in that night. Hart is going to need to raise his game for him to do well against Ramirez.
Arum wants to match Ramirez with Golovkin next year. I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Ramirez isn’t a huge name yet, and Golovkin can make more money if stays at 160 and looks to fight Canelo in a rematch. WBO featherweight champion Oscar Valdez (22-0, 19 KOs), fresh off his exciting 12 round unanimous decision win over Miguel Marriaga last April, defends against unbeaten but untested Genesis Servania (29-0, 12 KOs). This should be an easy win for Valdez, as Servania is not a puncher. Never the less, I thought Marriaga would be an easy win for Valdez, but he ended up getting hurt by him and the fight was very competitive. Valdez is a good slugger, but his boxing skills are lacking. He’s probably not going to stay a champion for a long time before one of the contenders eventually knocks him out. The other interesting fights on the September 22 card is unbeaten lightweight contender Felix Verdejo (23-0, 15 KOs) fighting Antonio Lozada Jr. (37-2, 31 KOs) in a 10-round fight. This is a good tune-up fight to get Verdejo ready to challenge WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan.
“Dana White is a foul-mouthed charlatan and why would I get in the gutter and trade insults with Dana White?” said Arum about McGregor’s UFC boss Dana White.
