By Scott Gilfoid: If Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn gets his way his fighter #1 IBF Lee Selby (20-1, 8 KOs) won’t have to do any traveling at all like traditional challengers do when he faces IBF featherweight champion Evgeny Gradovich (19-0-1, 9 KOs) this year.
Hearn is pushing to have the Gradovich-Selby fight staged in the UK, which obviously would give Selby a huge advantage.
Hearn is confident that he can get the Selby vs. Gradovich fight in the UK despite the fact that Selby isn’t really a popular fighter in terms of fan base. Hearn would obviously need to stick the fight on a card with well-known UK fighters that have a large fan base for it to do well and be worthwhile for Gradovich.
We recently saw Gradovich get arguably robbed in his last fight against Jayson Velez when he was held to a 12 round draw last November in Omaha, Nebraska. This was a fight that Gradovich appeared to win by at least four rounds, yet he found himself having to settle for a draw.
“We have already been in touch with Top Rank to make them an offer for a fight in the UK in the spring,” Hearn said via Skysports.com. “Either way I expect to confirm the fight in the next few weeks. We are keen to stage the fight here and I’m very confident Lee will become the IBF champion in his next fight.”
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum will need to think clearly when he sits down to study Hearn’s offer because in the long run it might not be worth it. If Gradovich is going to need to score a knockout to ensure that he walks out of the ring with his IBF belt, then I don’t see why it would be worth it for him to take the fight in the UK, because he’s going to be chasing Selby around the ring all night long.
It’s not as if Selby will stand and fight him. It’s going to be basically a cat and mouse type of fight where Gradovich will need to be chasing Selby and it’s going to be nearly impossible for him to knock him out.
Selby is coming off of a 9th round stoppage win in his last fight against Joel Brunker last October. This was yet another mismatch for Selby involving him facing some over-matched guy who didn’t look like he belonged in the top 15. Selby still hasn’t faced a quality opponent during his career, and it’s that pretty sad.
You’ve got to blame it on the International Boxing Federation for letting Selby fight in an eliminator with Brunker instead of someone like Abner Mares and Velez. What was interesting about the IBF is that they let Selby fight Brunker in the IBF eliminator instead of the arguably much more talented Mares or Velez.
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