By Chris Williams: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum has an unofficial Top Rank tourney going on with the following fights: Manny Pacquiao vs. Brandon Rios, Tim Bradley vs. Juan Manuel Marquez and Mike Alvarado vs. Ruslan Provodnikov.
It’s not an official tourney, but it pretty much comes out to be a tourney, because Arum is interested in matching the winners against each other. I see it more as a situation where Arum doesn’t have a lot of other options for these fighters as far as other guys in his Top Rank stable, because there’s not a lot of depth there beyond these guys.
Arum likes to have in house fights, so having them fight each other until one of them is crowned seems like a predictable move. However, I think where the tourney could fall apart is if Arum starts matching the guys up with each other over and over again in rematches.
Arum wanted to have Pacquiao fight Marquez a fifth time, and Arum already had Rios and Alvarado fight twice. In a real tourney, fighters move on after they win. They don’t keep fighting the same guy for a year in consecutive rematches.
Arum said to RingTV “Let’s see how these fights turn out. Let’s see how these fighters fight and then we’ll make a determination on who fights who…I’d like to see them all fight, because there are a lot of moving parts here….we’ll decide what best fights to make. I think anybody who is a boxing fans would want to watch all of those fights.”
I’m a boxing fan, and I’m not too excited about any of those fights. Why is Pacquiao fighting a guy that just lost in Rios? Why is Alvarado fighting a guy that just lost in Provodnikov? Why is Marquez wasting his time fighting Bradley? I’d rather see Marquez fighting WBA welterweight champion Adrien Broner or IBF champion Devon Alexander.
Tim Bradley was almost knocked out in his last fight by Provodnikov. I don’t see the Bradley-Marquez fight as being an interesting one at all. I really believe Arum has three duds for fights, and I’m not excited about him mixing and matching the same six guys over and over and over again.
Arum needs to find some new blood for his stable at 147, even if he has to move guys up in weight from the lightweight or light welterweight divisions to accomplish that.
I don’t rate Alvarado, Bradley, Rios or Provodnikov as being among the best in the welterweight division. You throw them in with Keith Thurman and Floyd Mayweather Jr., and they’d all likely lose badly. So why should I be interested in watching lesser fighters fight over and over again against other in an unofficial mini-tournament?
Comments are closed.