(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Scott Gilfoid: IBF super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (20-0, 14 KOs) is hoping his relationship with the high powered adviser Al Haymon will turn him into a star in the United States within a short while. With Frampton signing with Haymon last May, Frampton believes that he’ll wind up facing some or all of Haymon’s other fighters in the 122 and 126lb weight classes in Abner Mares, Leo Santa Cruz and Gary Russell Jr. Frampton thinks that if he can beat those guys, he’ll be well on his way to becoming a star in America.

Frampton’s first fight under Haymon’s guidance will be this Saturday night on Premier Boxing Champions on CBS against #13 IBF fringe contender Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. (25-1-2, 15 kOs) in a fight at the Don Haskins Center in El Paso, Texas.

It’s not a great fight and it’s also not the ideal venue if you’re looking to take advantage of Frampton’s Irish roots.

The place where the fight should have been staged is in the East Coast of the United States, where there are a lot of people from Irish descent living there in New York and Boston. If Frampton is going to become a star in America, he should be fighting on the East Coast rather than in Texas, where there isn’t a large Irish community.

Further, Frampton’s in and out style of fighting might not be the kind of style that the Texans appreciate from their fighters. They tend to like brawlers in that state, fighters that stand in the pocket and slug. That’s the opposite of the kind of fighting style that Frampton has. I just hope Frampton doesn’t get booed on Saturday if he chooses to run around the ring like he did in his fights against Kiko Martinez.

“It was a pretty easy decision, to be honest,” Frampton told Bleacher Report about joining Haymon’s 200-plus fighter stable. “I think that the exposure we can get with Al Haymon is absolutely massive and huge. “He’s (Haymon) got a lot of the top fighters around the super bantamweight division. All these names that I want to fight, you know,” Frampton said. “Leo Santa Cruz, Abner Mares, Gary Russell.”

I think Frampton still wouldn’t be a star if he beat those above mentioned fighters. Frampton would likely need to prove that he can beat guys like Nonito Donaire, Scott Quigg, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Nicholas Walters, Lee Selby, Vasyl Lomachenko and possibly some super featherweights like Orlando Salido and Takashi Uchiyama.

If Frampton could beat all those guys, then, yes, he would be a star. But we’re still talking about Frampton needing to win an additional 11 fights. That doesn’t sound like much, but it would be very difficult because these aren’t soft jobs like Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. and the other guys that Frampton has been beating during his career.

If Frampton thought he had a tough time beating Kiko Martinez, he’ll be in shock when he gets in the ring with the likes of Rigondeaux, Donaire, Lomachenko, Walters, Uchiyama, Russell, Santa Cruz and Mares. Those guys are a heck of a lot better than Kiko Martinez in my view, and I suspect Frampton will lose to many of them, if not all of them. Obviously, Frampton won’t be able to become a start if he loses to those guys, which is why he needs to improve his game so that he doesn’t lose to them, because right now I don’t see Frampton as having the talent to beat any of them. Yeah, Frampton can wait out an aging fighter like the 34-year-old Rigondeaux until he’s faded and lost his talent before he finally faces them, but Frampton isn’t young enough to do that to the like Mares, Russell Jr., Santa Cruz, Lomacheko, Walters or Uchiyama. If anything, Frampton will be the one who winds up getting hurt if he tries waiting three to five years before he faces them.

“So without linking up with him, it would have been pretty hard to make them fights (sic),” Frampton said. “If you want to do anything in America at the minute the way boxing is going, Al Haymon is the man to link up with, and we’ve done that.”