By Chris Williams: WBO welterweight champion Jeff Horn’s promoter Dean Lonergan says #3 WBO contender Bradley Skeete (27-1, 12 KOs) is too boring of a fighter for him to defend his title against. So instead of fighting the higher ranked Skeete, Horn (17-0-1, 11 KOs) will be defending his title against the lower ranked #10 WBO Gary Corcoran (17-1, 7 KOs) on December 13 in Brisbane, Australia.
This is voluntary defense for the 29-year-old Horn, who won the WBO belt last July with an ugly head-butting win over Manny Pacquiao in Brisbane. Horn and his promoter Lonergan were hoping to fight in a rematch this year, but Pacquiao is going to be out of action until next year because of his commitments with his senatorial job in the Philippines.
“I said ‘we can’t do this to the Australian public – this is the most boring fighter in the planet’,” Lonergan said to AFP in talking about Bradley Skeete. “The reason we went with Gary is that he fights an exciting go forward style. And Jeff had said ‘bring whoever you want but we are in the entertainment business’.”
Skeete looks like the much more talented fighter than Corcoran. Horn would have had a real fight on his hands against Skeete, who can box, move and punch at times. Skeete is a real clever fighter with excellent boxing skills. He’s not going to fight Horn in a stationary manner like he’s become to depend on for his opponents. Horn is a big guy for the welterweight division, and he does well when he can use his weight and overall size to bully his stationary opponents.
Skeete would have been a really hard fight for Horn, and there’s a high chance that the Australian would have lost that fight. At the very least, Skeete would have pushed Horn to the brink of losing. Skeete would have made Horn look bad, and it would be a real negative if we saw another controversial win for the Australian. Horn’s win over Pacquiao was a very questionable decision last July, and there are still many boxing fans that believe that he was given a hometown decision over the Filipino fighter. If the same thing happened in a fight between Horn and Skeete, it would be viewed in a negative manner by the boxing world.
By Horn being matched against the 26-year-old Corcoran, there’s little chance that he’ll get out-boxed by him, because the British fighter fancies himself as a slugger despite having very little punching power. Corcoran is perfect for Horn. Corcoran is a stationary fighter that likes to mix it up, and he can’t punch. If Horn could defend his WBO title against guys like Corcoran every time out, he’d likely hold onto his WBO title for the next 10 years or until he can no longer make weight for the 147 lb. division, which may take place sooner than you think. Horn looked like a middleweight inside the ring last July.
Lonergan is already looking past Corcoran for Horn, and thinking of the rematch against Pacquiao for next year. Lonergan plans on bringing Pacquiao back to Brisbane, Australia for the Horn rematch, even though the Filipino fighter has been vocal about wanting the rematch in the Philippines. Pacquiao doesn’t want to go back to Australia for a second fight with Horn, which isn’t all that surprising given the scoring of his previous fight with him, and the lack of control by the referee. Horn got away with roughing Pacquiao up for 12 rounds without the referee stepping in to penalize him.
“The only problem we do have is our good friend Mr. Pacquiao who is never as easy we would like him to be,” Lonergan said. “We will work with him for the next few months to get that fight down here.”
It’ll be interesting to see if Pacquiao caves in and agrees to fight Horn in Australia once again. If that’s where the money is for the fight, then it’s likely he’ll eventually agree to have the fight staged there again. Pacquiao didn’t want to fight Horn to begin with, however. Pacquiao was trying to get a match put together against Amir Khan in the UAE. Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum, who also co-promotes Horn, was more interested in the Pacquiao-Horn fight.
Arum eventually made that fight instead, and it turned out badly for Pacquiao. He got more money than he would have received for the Khan fight, but he ended up losing a controversial decision. If Pacquiao has to go back to Australia, he might need to take the judges out of play by knocking Horn out if he wants to get the win. Horn will probably use the same game plan as he did in the previous fight with Pacquiao. So you can expect Horn to be ramming into Pacquiao head first much of the night, and there could be a lot of shoving and head-locks as well from the Australian fighter. It could be fun to watch, but it would be more like an MMA fight than a boxing match.