Will Top Rank make the first move?

By Jamie Eskdale - 01/06/2014 - Comments

By Jamie Eskdale: With the seemingly never ending and tiresome Top Rank and Golden Boy Promotions stand off one thing seems quite alarmingly apparent. What seems apparent is that while Golden Boy seem to be flourishing and putting on big competitive cards. Top Rank seem to be drowning in a sea of mediocrity.

Sure they have a few big names but they can’t continue matching the same 3 or 4 guys against each other.
Looking at their last 2 big pay-per-view cards and it’s obvious to anyone that they are trailing behind Golden Boy in a big way.

Now I don’t want to go down the road of talking about PPV numbers here because quite frankly it bores me.

But watching the Manny Pacquiao – Brandon Rios PPV from Macau China I have to admit that at times I was bored rigid. Now I don’t want to start slating individual fighters here, that’s not what this is about but if they charge top dollar for a show they cannot expect to sell it on the main event alone. Particularly in this case where the main event was perceived to be a bit of a mismatch anyways.

The Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Tim Bradley card wasn’t much better. Again with the main event we knew what we would get based on the style of the 2 fighters. So with this being the case this should have been backed up with a strong undercard to make it as attractive as possible. Especially with the card being so soon after the strong Golden Boy ‘The One’ card only weeks earlier.

Not long after we had the non PPV fight with Ruslan Provodnikov defeating Mike Alvarado. Again there wasn’t much to see on the undercard but in this case I don’t suppose it mattered much because it wasn’t pay per view and fans weren’t expected to lay out any extra cash for it. That and the fact that we knew with those 2 guys in the main event we were going to get a real barn burner of a fight. And true to form we were served up a real crowd pleasing action packed bout.

I’m not sure of Provodnikov’s contractual situation with Top Rank but if as is rumored that he only has one fight left with Top Rank then he should think carefully about his next step.

Adding his name into the mix alongside Danny Garcia, Lamont Peterson, possibly Adrien Broner depending on where he goes next and especially Lucas Matthysse then it is there for all to see that while this feud is going on it would be foolish of the ‘Siberian Rocky’ to stick with Top Rank and wave bye to potential fights against those guys.

It would seem like Top Rank are boxing themselves in and really hurting their fighters, particularly in the Junior Welterweight and Welterweight divisions where all the talent seems to be signed to Golden Boy.

Still at the end of the day we don’t know who is to blame and while it is easy to make assumptions I am sure there is blame on both sides.

I have seen interviews recently where Bob Arum and Richard Schaefer both denied there was any feud and were both open to working with each other.

It is quite clear that someone is being economical with the truth but short of calling someone a liar there is not much that we can do about it.

The biggest shame in all of this is that it looks like it could be ruining the end of Manny Pacquiao’s career.

Pacquiao at this point should be looking forward to big money fights against the likes of Danny Garcia, Lucas Matthysse, Marcos Maidana, Amir Khan and of course Floyd Mayweather Jnr. As this time around we are being led to believe the only thing standing in the way of these two meeting is Pacquiao being signed with Top Rank.
Though obviously it must be pointed out that this hurdle isn’t as much to so with the feud but more to do with Mayweather’s refusal to do business with Bob Arum. This fight will likely never happen anyways so it’s probably best to not even speculate on it and turn this into another article about Pacquiao v Mayweather.

With all this being the case could Top Rank soon have a stable of unhappy fighters and fighters deserting them in search of big fights that very soon we will see the end?
Top Rank could be forced into making the first move and breaking the ice.

I understand there will be people mentioning the whole network situation. With Top Rank being contracted to HBO and Golden Boy being with Showtime but in all honestly this should be a real non issue. In fact I will go a step further and say its laughable that this can be used as an excuse for fights not happening. At times it seems a very convenient cop out for fights not happening. Let’s be real, if Top Rank and Golden Boy can iron out their differences then this issue with the networks will fade into the background.

If all these problems are sorted then we could very well be on the brink of a great new era in boxing were we have for the first time really, boxing working in harmony, like a well oiled machine and natural big fights organically taking place.

The my alarm goes off and awakens me from slumber as I my friends am a dreamer. But what a dream, and a dream that really shouldn’t be so difficult to turn into reality.



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