By Jim Dower: Later on tonight, four of the six best bantamweights will take part in Showtimes’s bantamweight tournament at the Emerald Queen Casino, in Tacoma, Washington. Vic Darchinyan will be facing Abner Mares, and Joseph Agbeko will take on Yonnhy Perez in what promises to be action packed bouts. The problem is that the two best bantamweights – Fernando Montiel and Nonito Donaire – won’t be taking part in the tournament, and that really hurts the tourney.

Unlike the Super Six tournament for the super middleweight division, the winner of the bantamweight tournament will still be considered the third best fighter in the bantamweight division behind Donaire and Montiel, and that’s a big problem that’s hard to ignore. For casual fans who have no clue about boxing, they might get hooked into these fights but there’s enough fighters in the tournament to get really excited, and also it may be nearly as interesting as the Super Six because many of the fighters don’t have huge fan bases.

Agbeko is from Ghan and Perez comes from Colombia. I don’t think either of those fighters are well known in the U.S. Maybe by the time that the tournament is over they’ll be better known, but it’s not an interesting tournament going in because of the less than popular fighters, the small number of fighters in the tournament and because the group is missing what many boxing fans and writers feel is the two best fighters in the tournament. That takes a lot of the air out of the tournament and makes it hard to see it as anything more than picking out an eventual victim for Donaire or Montiel to easily beat up.

Darchinayan should be able to beat Mares tonight, but that doesn’t say much. Darchinyan is small for a bantamweight and already lost to Agbeko. He’ll likely lose again when they meet in the future. Mares and Yonnhy Perez fought to a 12 round draw in May in a fight that I thought Mares should have won. Perez already beat Agbeko in October last year, and he’ll probably beat him again. I don’t see the point in this fight, and it take a lot of interest away for me.

I think this is a bad idea for a tournament and see it as the wrong division, the wrong fighters and the wrong amount of fighters for this to be even remotely as interesting as the Super Six tournament.