By Dan Ambrose: WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz’s showcase fight against Jesus Ruiz (33-5-5, 22 KOs) is now official for January 17th on Showtime Championship Boxing on the same card as the heavyweight bout between Deontay Wilder and Bermane Stiverne. It’s assumed that it will be the co-feature on that card.
You can read “showcase” to mean mismatch in this case, because Ruiz, ranked #14 in featherweight division, is not likely going to be a competitive match-up unless Santa Cruz has slipped a couple of notches since his last fight.
“I want to put on a great show on January 17th,” Santa Cruz said about his fight against Ruiz. “And show boxing fans that I am a strong fighter ready to go to the next level and take on the top, tough fighters in the division: Guillermo Rigondeaux, Scott Quigg, Carl Frampton and Abner Mares.”
It’s kind of surprising that Showtime agreed to televise the Santa Cruz-Ruiz fight, because it’s a terrible mismatch on paper along the lines of Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka, and it’s not a quality fight in my view.
If this was just the first mismatch for Santa Cruz in ages then it would be understandable that he should get a freebee. However, this is the third poor match-up in a row for the 26-year-old Santa Cruz. Why Showtime keeps agreeing to televise these mismatches is unclear.
It would seem logical that the guy pulling the levers with Showtime in terms of agreeing to the fights should be saying no to some of these mismatches in order to keep the quality up for the paying subscribers.
In Santa Cruz’s last mismatch last September, he destroyed his ex-sparring partner Manuel Roman in two rounds. It was unbelievable that this fight made on television given that it was on the Floyd Mayweather vs. Marcos Maidana 2 card. Before that, Santa Cruz defeated a past his best Cristian Mijares in August of 2013. What’s interesting about this fight is that Mijares was beaten recently by one of Santa Cruz’s knockout victims Victor Terrazas.
Santa Cruz might as well have fought Terazas again for a second time rather than facing the guy he beat in Mijares.
What’s disappointing about Santa Cruz, besides the horrible match-making that is now being routinely done for him, is that he’s been talking back and forth with WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux about wanting to fight him. But instead of facing Rigondeaux, Santa Cruz ends up with Jesus Ruiz, Mijares and Manuel Roman. It almost makes you think Santa Cruz is namedropping in order to get a bump up in popularity without him having to risk his neck against the Cuban star.
At this point it would be nice to see Santa Cruz fight any of the super bantamweight champions in order to see him finally in with someone good. However, that’s not likely to happen.
There’s talk of Santa Cruz possibly facing Abner Mares in April. I’ll believe that when I see it. I don’t think it’s going to happen.
Santa Cruz is a fighter who is kind of up against a wall. He really can’t be matched against Rigondeaux because he would likely lose badly. He can’t move up anymore in weight because the featherweights would likely be a step too far for him. Can you imagine throwing Santa Cruz in with Nicholas Walters, Jhonny Gonzalez or Vasyl Lomachenko? Those would all be mismatches. Even Evgeny Gradovich would be too good for Santa Cruz, because he’s too slow and easy to hit.
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