By Scott Gilfoid: Lou Dibella, the promoter for WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, thinks the media has it wrong to see this Saturday night’s fight between the powerful Martinez vs. the little known European fighter Darren Barker (23-0, 14 KO’s) as a horrible mismatch that’s not worthy of being shown on HBO.

Dibella thinks the media has “underestimated” Barker, according to fightnews.com. I disagree. I think the media has done their homework quite well on Barker, seen that he’s slow, not particularly powerful, inexperienced against quality opposition and fights in a straight up manner without bending his legs. The media knows what they see in the Barker-Martinez fight – a mismatch. This isn’t compelling viewing for HBO, and the undercard fight between Any Lee vs. Brian Vera, although a better fight than the Barker vs. Martinez bout, it’s a fight that’s really three years too late in coming.

Lee was stopped in the 7th round by Vera in March 2008, and it’s taken Lee all this time to finally get in the ring with Vera again. At the time that Lee was stopped, his trainer Emanuel Steward had been talking about Lee being ready to take on WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik. Nothing has changed since then other than Lee getting older. He’s still as flawed as he was in the Vera fight, as we saw in Lee getting staggered recently by Craig McEwan in a life and death fight for Lee. It’s hard to see that as anything more than an ESPN2 fight unfortunately.

The media wants HBO to show the best fights possible, because not only does it make things easier for the media because they have great fights to write about, but it also helps the sport by attracting new fans. The Barker vs. Martinez isn’t a great fight, nor is it one that will help attract new boxing fans in my view. Barker is completely unknown to U.S audiences and looks incredibly mediocre. It’s not interesting writing about a fight where one guy is going to get torn apart by the champion Martinez. I think HBO isn’t helping boxing fans nor Martinez for televising this fight. They should have waited until Martinez was at least fighting someone like WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or someone better before putting Martinez’s fights on their network. I’m sure they could have said something about the Barker-Martinez fight when the idea was floated to them which would have given Martinez’s people second thoughts about making this mismatch.

Dibella can try to say this is a good fight until he’s blue in the face, but what does he want the media to do – believe their eyes or what he’s saying? I know what I see when I watch Barker fight and isn’t someone that stands a chance against Martinez. He’s fodder for Martinez.