By Jason Kim: Showtime’s bantamweight tournament will finally conclude this Saturday night with International boxing Federation (IBF) bantamweight champion Joseph Agbeko (28-2, 22 KO’s) facing still unbeaten WBC Silver bantamweight champion Abner Mares (21-0-1, 13 KO’s) at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

While there is a well known title at stake for this fight, it doesn’t really have the feel for a genuine tournament finals type fight. The problem here is that the best two fighters in the bantamweight division – Nonito Donaire and Fernando Montiel – didn’t take part in the tournament. Because of that, this has an eliminator type feel.

Although Donaire doesn’t have any intention of fighting the winner of this fight, because he plans on fighting one more time at bantamweight and then moving up in weight to the super bantamweight division.

Agbeko, 31, defeated Yonnhy Perez in his last fight by a 12 round unanimous decision to capture the IBF belt last December. Before that, Agbeko had been beaten by Perez in a 12 round decision in October 2009. That fight kind of took a lot of the interest out of the tourney as well, because boxing fans had already seen the two fight and were expecting another wide decision win for Perez.

Mares, 25, has had a poor tournament, fighting to a 12 round draw with Perez in May 2010, and then winning a very controversial 12 round split decision win over Vic Darchinyan in December 2010. Darchinyan landed the much cleaner shots all throughout the fight and had Mares looking like a bloody mess. The fight really needed a rematch before moving on to a finals.

Taken as a whole, with Mares winning a questionable decision over Darchinyan and Agbeko having beaten no one other than Perez, it kind of makes the finals feel anti-climatic. The tournament really needed more fighters for it to feel like a real tournament.