By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya is working on some important fights for some of his biggest stars for 2015. De La Hoya specifically mentions Adrien Broner, Keith Thurman, Lucas Matthysse, Abner Mares, and Robert Guerrero.
All of those fighters have been taking it easy for a while and it would be good to finally see them matched up against some quality fighters once again.
Broner, Mares, Thurman and Matthysse are examples of fighters who have been matched softly lately with easy fights. Matthysse had a good fight against Danny Garcia in 2013, but since then he’s fought John Molina and Roberto Ortiz. It’s time that Matthysse gets stepped up again to face someone that can give him a good fight.
“I’m working on some exciting fights, and that includes Mares, Thurman, Lucas, Broner, Guerrero,” said De La Hoya via RingTV.com. “I am looking forward to promoting the next American heavyweight hope, Deontay Wilder.”
Wilder has a big fight ahead of him in the next two weeks against WBC heavyweight champion Bermane Stiverne on January 17th. If Deontay can’t win that fight then it might not matter how good De La Hoya’s promoting is for him. He’s got to show that he has the chin to beat Stiverne.
You can surmise that if Wilder’s chin fails him against Stiverne then it’ll fail him against other top heavyweights. Wilder’s opposition has been so poor since he turned pro that it wouldn’t be surprising at all to see him crumble against Stiverne and against the other top guys in the division.
The match-making for Thurman has been especially disappointing. The guy is about to turn 27, and he’s still facing middle of the road opposition instead of the best. If De La Hoya is going to step it up with him then he’s going to need to in a major way because he’s being moved forward and he was recently booed out of the ring for the way he fought against 40-year-old Leonard Bundu.
It’s unclear if De La Hoya thought this would be a good showcase fight for Thurman, but it turned out to be a terrible before for him because of his running from the smaller, older and weaker Bundu. It would be good to see Thurman matched against Maidana or someone like Luis Carlos Abregu. Thurman needs to show that he can stand in the pocket without running though because he really stunk up the joint against Bundu.
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