The Embarrassment of the Two Best Boxing Divisions

By Boxing News - 06/24/2009 - Comments

pavlik645260By Simon Hirst: As a boxing fan who consistently forks out money to watch boxing, goes out his way to watch fights that aren’t on telelvision here in the U.K, waiting up until the early hours for American fights, I feel somewhat cheated by the greed of some of today’s fighters and concerned at the lack of what I can only describe as ‘lack of testicular fortitude’ of some boxers.

The two weight divisions I’m talking about are the welterweight division and the super middleweight division. Now let’s have a look at the fighters in each division. All of these are house hold names and if you pit one against the other, you should be left 9 times out of 10 with a fight the public want to see.

From the welterweight division, you have Miguel Cotto, Manny Pacquiao, Joshua Clottey, Juan Manuel Marquez, Kermit Cintron, Floyd Mayweather, Shane Mosley, Andre Berto.

From the super middleweight division, you have Mikkel Kessler, Lucian Bute, Carl Froch, Kelly Pavlik, Arthur Abraham, Bernard Hopkins, Chad Dawson. (I appreciate for both divisions, not all boxers are natural at this weight, but my point is, it wouldn’t take a strectch of imagination for it to happen)

Now pick two names out of one category and you have quite an interesting match. For example, everyone wants to see two of these four fighters fight each other, with the fighters being Mayweather, Cotto, Mosley, Pacquaio. However, with Pacquaio constantly wanting a stupidly higher percentage of the purse, it draws out negotiations and makes fights more difficult to happen. Why fights aren’t 50-50 is beyond me. If anyone deserved more, I’d say the winner of the fight should, so make the fight a 40-40 purse and the winner gets the remaining 20 share. By selfishly demanding a huge share, it instantly decreases the chances of making the fight happen, which is hugely disappointing for fans, especially when other similar sports consistently give fans value for money, talking of which, UFC 100 have three fights which could are all main event calibre.

Looking at the super middleweight division, there are so many great fighters not fighting each other. Froch, credit to him, is trying to unify the titles and looks set to fight Bute next. A division down, It’s anybody’s guess as to why Abraham and Pavlik haven’t fought yet. When Pavlik stunned the world, he was heralded as the people’s champion and I thought we were going to see a fighter wanting to take on the best. Instead, he got schooled by Hopkins and has fought bums. Same with Abraham, just fighting bums instead of unifying the division. Dawson, I can’t really blame him too much, should never have rematched Tarver, although I believe he was contractually obligated to. Johnson, despite all the criticism, deserves his rematch. After that, Dawson needs to either move down a division or fight Hopkins.

Now, I know people will say it isn’t the fighters fault, it’s the promoters fault. But are you telling me that if Pavlik said to Arum, ‘get me a fight with Abraham, I am better than him and will fight him in Germany, just make it happen’ then Arum wouldn’t? As greedy as most promoters appear to be, I think boxers are more than happy to use this as an excuse and keep themselves out the firing line rather than challenging this and making the best fights happen. (By the way, this is very critical of Pavlik, I don’t mean it to be, it’s purely an example, not a personal attack)

Boxing won’t have a golden era such as Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran until they all fight each other. It really is a shame because the potential is there for all to see, but unfortunately, some people trying to milk it for all it’s worth are not willing to risk all for the reward. It is a shame that, to me, money has become a much bigger prize than legacy, when in actual fact, both combined together deliver a much bigger prize to the fighter, fan and the sport.



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