By Dave Lahr: In case you might not be aware, the cruiserweight division is one of the most ignored divisions in boxing. Outside of the most hardcore of boxing fans, few people could name who the current champions are in the division right now. That’s not because there’s not any talented fighters in the division, because there certainly quite a few of them.
However, the cable networks don’t typically pay much attention to the cruiserweight division and rarely show their fights. This is one of the reasons why cruiserweights don’t get a lot of money for their fights, even when they hold a title. This causes many of them to either move up or down in weight.
Because the light heavyweight division is equally ignored much of the time by cable networks, it leaves the cruiserweight little option but to move up in weight. For most of them, they have almost no chance of ever finding success at heavyweight because of the huge size disparity that separates most cruiserweights and the super giants in the heavyweight division like the Klitschko brothers.
Former cruiserweight David Haye thus far has been an exception, but even he may prove to be too small for the heavyweight class. Haye has been awarded title shots more or less based on his ability to talk rather than having earned his way to a title shot.
If Haye were forced to work his way up from the cruiserweight division like other cruiserweight turned heavyweights, Haye would likely fail just like the other cruiserweights that lack the giant size to compete in the division.
For this reason, I think there needs to be a Super Six for the cruiserweight division in order to get the boxing public, and most importantly, the cable networks interested in showing their fights. It seems to be working with the super middleweight division, because Showtime’s planned tournament has received a great deal of positive attention and it’s still over a month away from starting.
My guess is that the tournament is going to help the super middleweight division in a big way by getting fans aware of the weight class while also at the same time creating a new batch of stars. This is exactly what the cruiserweight division needs to have happen.
They already have excellent fighters like Marco Huck, Tomasz Adamek, Steve Cunningham, Victor Emilio Ramirez, Alexander Alekseev, Ola Afolabi, Denis Lebedev and BJ Flores. What the division needs is some cable network to get those fighters in a tournament so that they could get better exposure and in turn both the cruiserweight division and boxing gets a shot in the arm in the process.
Huck, 24, defeated Ramirez last weekend to win the WBO title in a war, yet few Americans got a chance to see the fight and have little idea who these people area. The same goes for Afolabi, Alekseev, Adamek and Lebedev.
These fighters have rarely, in some cases never, been shown on television in the U.S. Flores and Cunningham have been lucky enough to have some of their fights shown on television, but it’s been rare. I think it would be interesting to see a tournament specifically for the cruiserweight division because this would really help the divison and the sport on many different levels.
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