By Dan Ambrose: WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (10-0, 8 KO’s) is being fed a prospect instead of an actual contender in his next fight against 22-year-old Robert Marroquin (22-1, 15 KO’s) on September 15th at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Rigondeaux-Marroquin fight will be the co-feature bout on the Sergio Martinez vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. HBO televised pay-per-view card.
Also on the card will be fights between Rafael Marquez and Wilfredo Vazquez Jr, Matthew Macklin and Joachim Alcine, and Mikael Zewski vs. TBA.
The Rigondeaux-Marroquin fight would be interesting if Marroquin was a good fighter that stood a chance, but he’s not good enough to avoid getting badly beaten by Rigondeuax in this fight. We already saw Marroquin handled by Francisco Leal last year in a 10 round upset loss. Bob Arum is probably high on Marroquin’s future but putting him in with Rigondeaux is terrible matchmaking.
With Rigondeaux not facing an actual contender, he needs to get this mismatch against Marroquin over as fast as possible so that his stock doesn’t go down. When an excellent fighter gets matched up against an old fighter way past his best or in this case a mere prospect, it puts the quality fighter in a situation where he’s not going to get much credit for beating the prospect and a ton of pressure to get that fighter out of there as fast as possible to avoid looking bad.
You don’t take a prospect and throw him in with the best fighter in the division unless you’re ready to roll the dice and just pray that it turns out well. Going from facing C level fighters to the A+ level Rigondeaux is going to be way too much for the 22-year-old Marroquin on September 15th. I’m kind of surprised that Arum would make this fight because it goes against his usual careful way of matching his fighters. But I guess he’s willing to risk Marroquin by hoping he doesn’t beaten too badly in this fight.
The other thing is Arum doesn’t have a lot of fighters around that weight class to match against Rigondeaux. Of course, he could put IBF/WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire in with Rigondeaux, but the chances are incredibly high that Donaire will end up getting knocked out and embarrassed against Rigondeaux, and I don’t think Arum wants that to happen because Donaire brings in good money for his fights.
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