By Chris Williams: I’ve been wondering why the September 19th fight between Juan Manuel Marquez and Floyd Mayweather Jr. hasn’t been selling well with boxing fans. At first, I thought it was the crummy undercard that Golden Boy had put together which has Michael Katsidis vs. Vicente Escobedo, Zab Judah vs. Antonio Diaz, and Chris John vs. Rocky Juarez, but I’m starting to think that it may be that Mayweather isn’t a big enough attraction to create interest in this fight card.
In any one fight card, there has to be at least one huge star to get boxing fans interested in purchasing tickets and/or PPV. But in this case, Mayweather seems to be the equivalent of bug repellent for a lot of fans, because they don’t seem in the least bit interested in purchasing this card judging by the news around the net. If Mayweather isn’t a big enough star to pull in the fans, you certainly can’t expect John, Juarez, Katsidis, Judah or Diaz to do the job.
Judah is losing about as much as he is winning nowadays and is mostly a gatekeeper type fighter in the welterweight division. Diaz? Does anyone aside from diehard boxing fans know who he is? Katsidis has been beaten in two out of his last four fights and is starting to look a little shot to me.
John, a fighter from Indonesia, is only now starting to make a name for himself in the U.S., but he’s a featherweight and a pure boxer, not exactly the most exciting fighter you’ll ever see. Juarez was an interesting fighter to watch a several years ago, but after loses to Humberto Soto, Marco Antonio Barrera (two of them) and Juan Manuel Marquez, he doesn’t appear to be the same fighter anymore. Juarez looked good in only one round against John, the rest of them Juarez stood on the outside as if he was a statue, throwing few punches. Very boring.
Back to Mayweather. He’s been the classical definition of a boring, safety-first fighter most of his career, tending to hit and run and basically frustrate his opponents. Some boxing fans like this kind of thing likening it to the purest form of boxing, but I’m not one of them. To me, it’s painful to watch most of Mayweather’s fights because he’s so dull with his movement and pot shots.
Mayweather looks good in some fights, like against a limited Ricky Hatton and Arturo Gatti, but against fighters with boxing skills or power, Mayweather often stinks up the joint. Mayweather’s tendency to seek out smaller fighters than him since the Hatton fight, is even more off putting.
I think boxing fans would really go for a fight with Mayweather taking on a fighter two divisions bigger than him like middleweight Kelly Pavlik or super middleweight Mikkel Kessler, but to be fighting an opponent two divisions smaller than him in Marquez, it’s not interesting. You know Mayweather is probably going to win because of his size advantage and the fact that Marquez just recently moved up to the lightweight division not too long ago.
Marquez was a super featherweight last year, which means that Mayweather is really fighting an older 35-year-old fighter that is three divisions smaller than him. That’s not exactly a fair fight in my mind. I would be happy if Mayweather would just fight someone his own size at welterweight, like Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto, but I doubt he ever will.
But I can’t even begin to imagine Mayweather growing the balls to fight a fighter three divisions bigger than him like super middleweight Andre Ward, Kessler, Jermain Taylor, Arthur Abraham, Carl Froch, or Andre Dirrell, could you? That’s the whole problem.
Mayweather is hand picking fighters much smaller than him, yet is still thinking that the boxing public is dumb enough to ignore that and see it as a relevant fight instead of the mismatch that it appears to be. Throw in a crappy undercard of faded fighters and ones that probably never will be champions in a million years, and you have the equivalent of box office poison.
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