By Scott Gilfoid: Scott Quigg (31-0-2, 23 KOs) thinks IBF super bantamweight champion Carl Frampton (21-0, 14 KOs) had gotten a little too big for his britches recently with his ego souring sky high after a series of wins that he’d accumulated.
After going to the United States and being dropped twice by little known Alejandro Gonzalez Jr (25-3-2, 15 KOs) in their fight last July, Quigg thinks Frampton got a good dose of humility.
To be sure, the 28-year-old Frampton still beat Gonzalez by a 12 round unanimous decision, but it was a tough fight for Frampton with him taking many hard shots to the head and body. Frampton was hurt in the 1st and 9th rounds by Gonzalez in that fight.
Quigg and Frampton will be fighting two months from now on February 27 at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK. It’s a fight that is a big deal in the UK, but it doesn’t resonate anywhere else. It is like a fight between two top five fighters in the 122lb division, but not a fight involving the very best fighter at super bantamweight. That fighter is former WBA/WBO champion Guillermo Rigondeaux, who has not received much notice by Quigg and Frampton for some reason.
The fact that Quigg and Frampton are not chomping at the bit to fight Rigondeaux kind of taints their own fight in my view, and relegates it to a lower level fight but not one involving the best. It is just a fight involving belt holders but not the true champion at 122.
“He [Frampton] went over to America and thought he was going to crack America and say he had arrived but he came back with his tail between his legs,” Quigg said to skysports.com. “But I do think that will make him a better fighter because he got carried away with the hype and now he is going to go back to the drawing board.”
I do not think you needed to see Frampton get knocked down twice by Gonzalez to realize that Frampton wasn’t the real thing. You could see that Frampton is a flawed fighter just by looking at some of his fights. He is a short fighter who has done against other flawed fighters like Kiko Martinez, Chris Avalos and Hugo Fidel Cazares. Frampton never fought the talents in the 122lb, 126 and 130lb divisions like Rigondeaux, Leo Santa Cruz, Orlando Salido, Rocky Martinez, Takashi Uchiyama, Takashi Miura, Francisco Vargas, Javier Fortuna, Rances Barthelemy, Gary Russell Jr, Vasyl Lomachenko, Nicholas Walters, Jhonny Gonzalez, Abner Mares, or Nonito Donaire.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhxH_5Vdv3w
Instead of fighting those guys, Frampton fought a whole bunch of beatable guys with limited talent, and with questionable chins. When Frampton finally faced a decent level fighter in Gonzalez, Frampton got knocked down and hurt in that fight.
“Tickets went in no time… the press and everyone has got behind this and rightly so. We are two top fighters at the top of our game who are both going to put it all on the line,” Quigg said.
The Quigg vs. Frampton fight is big in the UK, but then again many fights are big over there, but it does not mean they are great fights. If you stick Quigg-Frampton in the U.S or in Canada, my guess is the fight would be lucky to attract more than 1000 fans.
I do not think you put the fight in a main event because I don’t see enough boxing fans wanting to come see it. If you televise the fight in the U.S, I do not see the ratings being good. As such, I see the Frampton-Quigg fight as strictly a domestic level fight and not one that can attract worldwide attention. All that would be different I feel if Frampton and Quigg had faced the likes of Rigondeaux, Donaire, Nicholas Walters, Mares, Vasyl Lomachenko, Gary Russell Jr, Jhonny Gonzalez and Santa Cruz in the past to show the U.S boxing fans that they were willing to take on the real talents instead of the lesser fighters.
My hope is that after the smoke clears from the Frampton-Quigg fight in February that the winner of the contest will step it up a couple of levels and starts facing the quality guys instead of the lesser fighters. I’d really like to see the winner and the loer of the Frampton vs. Quigg fight face Donaire, Rigondeaux, Walters, Mares, Lomachenko, Gonzalez, Russell Jr, Santa Cruz, Salido, Uchiyama, Miura, Vargas, Martinez, and Fortunate. I don’t think that’s asking too much of them. I mean, if Frampton and Quigg are really quality fighters, then they should be willing to themselves against the best, shouldn’t they?
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