By Scott Gilfoid: Now that Carl Frampton (22-0, 14 KOs) has done what most people thought he would do in beating WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg (31-1-2, 23 KOs) last night by a 12 round split decision at the Manchester Arena, Frampton isn’t so sure whether he’ll face the WBA mandatory challenger Guillermo Rigondeaux next.
The World Boxing Association already said the winner of the Frampton-Quigg fight had to defend the WBA title against Rigondeaux next, but it is unclear whether the 28-year-old Frampton will do that. He is talking about wanting to face undefeated WBA featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 KOs) next.
Santa Cruz dispatched former IBF 122lb champion Kiko Martinez (35-7, 26 KOs) by a 5th round knockout last Saturday night in their fight on Showtime Boxing from the Honda Center, in Anaheim, California. Santa Cruz looked spectacular in blasting out a game but limited 29-year-old Martinez in five rounds in front of a huge screaming crowd last night. With the way that Santa Cruz looked, I don’t think there’s anyone in the division that can hang with him, least of all the short 5’5” Martinez.
“I’d be happy to fight him [Rigondeaux],” Frampton said to IFL TV. ‘I’ve said it all along. We need to meet as a team to decide where we’ll go from here. There’s a potential fight with Santa Cruz at featherweight as well, which I could jump up to quite comfortably. There’s real options.”
I think it’s very, very likely that Frampton and his team will decide against taking the fight against Rigondeaux. I could be wrong, but that’s how I see it playing out. I think Frampton’s next move will quickly be decided within two weeks with him vacating his newly won WBA super bantamweight title in order to avoid having to defend it against Rigondeaux.
Thanks for sharing the ring with me @scottquigg and I wish you well in recovery. All the best mate
— Carl Frampton (@RealCFrampton) February 28, 2016
With the huge burden of having the WBA title in his possession, I see Frampton then looking to either step up and face Santa Cruz or fight Quigg in a rematch. There’s a lot of money still available for a second fight against the 27-year-old Quigg, and I think Frampton will find it hard to resist going back and scooping up all that cash in a second fight.
Quigg is already yapping about how he suffered a broken jaw in the 4th round of their fight last night, and he feels the outcome would be different in a second fight. As such, Frampton has the readymade excuse to duck Rigondeaux and face Quigg again if that is what he wants.
All Frampton has to do is start talking about how the fight did not show who the better man was because of Quigg suffering a broken jaw. The thing is I can see another excuse coming up from Quigg’s side after they face each other again. If Quigg loses that fight too, then I would not be surprised if he were to bring up some other injury or some training issue to blame his defeat on. In other words, I see the excuses as continual thing from Quigg.
At some point, there will diminishing returns because the boxing public can only handle so many excuses from a fighter for his losses before they lose interest in wanting to pay to see the guy fight. For me, I one injury excuse is enough to put me off. I’m not interested in ever seeing Frampton and Quigg fight again. We saw who the master was in that fight, and if Quigg got injured, too bad. He was injured because of a punch, and that’s how fights go. You get nailed and you get hurt. That doesn’t mean you should keep getting rematches until you find a perfect situation where you don’t get injured and you’re able to finally make it through the fight without some kind of excuse coming up.
“I won the fight pretty easy,” Frampton said about his fight against Quigg. “Carl Froch gave it a draw? That’s bonkers.”
So Froch thought the Frampton-Quigg fight was a draw? Oh man, what was Froch thinking. I would have to have my eyes closed for 12 rounds to come up with something like that.
I think that Santa Cruz is a bad match-up for Frampton. He is too tall. At 5’7 ½” Santa Cruz is much taller than the 5’5” Frampton, and I think it’ll be a mismatch like last night’s fight between Santa Cruz and the 5’5” Kiko Martinez.
Quigg is 5’8”, but he did not know how to use his height and reach advantage. Instead of throwing jabs and statying on the outside to take advantage of his size, Quigg stood at medium distance and threw wide hooks all night long. With Quigg at medium distance, this allowed the shorter Frampton to land his punches at a high connect percentage. That is the funny part. Instead of Quigg using his size and reach, it was Quigg that was able to do all the jabbing.
“I just want the rematch if I can have the chance, because I really do think if I start quicker next time it will be a different story,” said Quigg to skysports.com.
Well, there it is. Quigg is talking about wanting a rematch. He’s set it up for Frampton to hit it out of the park. All Frampton needs to do is grant Quigg his wish by giving him the rematch. Quigg will do the rest by talking about his broken jaw to the boxing public to give them a reason to dish out their money a second time to see them fight on Sky Box Office.
I think Quigg is better off looking in another direction rather than facing Frampton again. Let’s look at it this way; if Quigg fights Frampton a second time in an immediate rematch, the chances are high that Quigg will lose that fight. Heck, Quigg can come up with any injury excuse he wants to try and explain away the loss, but the fact of the matter is, he’ll have lost the fight. It’ll show another loss on his resume and that’s what counts.
Quigg needs to go back to fighting the guys he was facing before he met up with Frampton so that he can start winning again. Before he fought Frampton, Quigg was fighting fodder type opposition in record-padding fights and doing quite well. If Quigg can go back to those kind of opponents, then he can rebuild slowly and eventually face Frampton in a rematch in a couple of years. The boxing public will be more receptive to a rematch at that time then they would if the fight were to happen right now with Quigg coming off of a loss and a broken jaw injury excuse.
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