(Photo credit: Suzanne Teresa/Premier Boxing Champions) By Dan Ambrose: Former two division world champion Leo Santa Cruz (30-0-1, 17 KOs) is ready for his important fight against former three division world champion Abner Mares (29-1-1, 15 KOs) this month on August 29th on Premier Boxing Champions on ESPN from the Staples Center, in Los Angeles, California.
Santa Cruz sees this fight as potentially the toughest of his career and by far the most important. He’s moving up in weight from the safety net of the 122lb division to fight at 126, and there are a lot of unknowns for him.
Mares is a tough and proven fighter who has beaten a lot of quality fighters before during his career. There’s no question that Mares is the more experienced and more accomplished fighter of the two. Santa Cruz has never beaten anyone of note in his entire career, so this will be his first fight where he’s facing a name. Will Santa Cruz succeed or will he fall apart. We’re going to find out at the end of the month.
“I’m very determined to win this fight. It’s the biggest fight of my career. I have a lot to lose I have a lot to prove,” Santa Cruz said. I want to prove to all of the fans that I deserve to be on this level. A win against Mares will put me on the level to get more big fights”
Both Mares and Santa Cruz have been matched very weakly for the past two years, as if both guys were need of a lot of tune-ups. It was somewhat understandable in Mares’ case because he was flattened in the 1st round by Jhonny Gonzalez in 2013, so you can give Mares a pass in taking tune-ups for a year after the fight. Where it got strange is when the tune-ups stretched into the second year. That was just a waste for Mares, and he has nothing to show for those lost years.
In Santa Cruz’s case, he’s fought weak opposition as the WBC super bantamweight champion for the last two years, and it appears that he’s just been milking his WBC title with wins over Jose Cayetano, Jesus Ruiz, Manuel Roman, and Cristian Mijares. It’s unclear why Santa Cruz’s management has matched him so weakly for the past two years, but I guess they have their reasons. Mijares was a good fighter at one time, but that was a long time ago. Now he’s just another one of the many contenders in the division that aren’t going anywhere.
“This is the toughest fighter I’ve faced. A fight against him will be the biggest of my career. Even bigger than my first title. Mares has a bigger name, everything is bigger,” Santa Cruz said. “With two Mexicans fighting, it’s always a war. There have been a lot of great battles like that in the past and I think this will be too. We could end up with a trilogy of fights.”
The Mare vs. Santa Cruz fight will have a little bit of competition on August 29th in the form of the Shane Mosley vs. Ricardo Mayorga fight on pay-per-view on the same night. However, that fight isn’t likely to pull in too many fans because they’re charging $45 for boxing fans to see the fight and there isn’t likely too many people willing to pay that kind of money to see two old timers go at it.
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