Marquez-Diaz: A Great undercard, but is the main event kind of lacking?

By Boxing News - 07/03/2010 - Comments

Image: Marquez-Diaz: A Great undercard, but is the main event kind of lacking?By Chris Williams: I really commend Golden Boy Promotions for putting together such a fine undercard for the July 31st bout between WBA/WBO lightweight champion Juan Manuel Marquez (50-5-1, 37 KO’s) and Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KO’s) at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada. However, I’m wondering how well this fight pay-per-view card will end up doing. Judging by the lack of talk about it on boxing internet forums, I suspect that the Marquez-Diaz card won’t bring in very big numbers in terms of PPV buys.

If Golden Boy is okay with that, then I’m fine too. I just think the card is missing a huge attractive main event that would draw fans in by big numbers to purchase the fight. The problem here is that Diaz has lost three out of his last five fights, including a knockout loss to Marquez only last year in March.

This is the equivalent of Manny Pacquiao turning around and fighting Miguel Cotto again after he already destroyed just last year. While I think some of the boxing public are interested in seeing Marquez, 36, fight a rematch with Diaz, I don’t know that there will be enough of them that want to see this match-up to purchase this card in big numbers on PPV. That, I think, is the main problem with this fight.

It certainly doesn’t matters any that Marquez was completely dominated by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in his last fight a year ago in September, losing by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision to Mayweather in Las Vegas. So basically what we have here for July 31st is a fight between two guys – Marquez and Diaz – that were both beaten in their last fights and one of them is now getting beaten on a regular basis.

I’m happy that Golden Boy was smart enough to put in fights like Daniel Jacobs vs. Dmitri Pirog, Robert Guerrero vs. Joel Casamayor, and Jorge Linares vs. Rocky Juarez on the underard, but I don’t think boxing fans purchase cards for the undercard. Most of them purchase fight cards because they want to see one particularly huge fight, and I just don’t see the main even between Diaz and Marquez as being a huge enough fight to get huge PPV numbers.

What Golden Boy should have done, if they wanted to Marquez to be in the main event, was to have WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan face Marquez instead. Of course, they would have to pay Marquez huge money for him to want to move up in weight to challenge Khan for his WBA title, but I think it would have been worthwhile for Golden Boy to have done this.

Diaz just hasn’t looked the same recently since being beaten by Nate Campbell in 2008. Diaz has been beaten by Paulie Malignaggi and Marquez since that fight, and probably should have lost both of the fights to Malignaggi. Diaz has lost a lot of the unbeatable mystique that he previously had before suffering these three losses.

And like I said, boxing fans usually purchase cards for a huge main event, and I think the Marquez-Diaz fight doesn’t fit in the huge category, at least not anymore.



Comments are closed.