By Dan Ambrose: World Boxing Association World middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs (31-1, 28 KOs) successfully made weight on Thursday for his rematch against 35-year-old Sergio “The Latin Snake” Mora (28-4-2, 9 KOs) for their fight on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) on Spike this Friday at the Santander Arena, in Reading, Pennsylvania. Mora weighed in at 159.3lbs.
There has been very little interest in the Jacobs-Mora rematch, and you can hope for is casual fans choosing to tune in on Spike, one of the free channels. It’s just not a fight that the fans in general consider to be needed or wanted at this point. Jacobs showed last year that he was the better fighter in stopping Mora in the 2nd round.
Mora suffered a broken ankle while being dropped for the second time in the fight. I guess the argument in favor of a rematch was based on Mora’s injury, but he wasn’t going to win the fight. When he went down in the 2nd, it would have been over if he hadn’t suffered the injury. Jacobs would have smashed him right away and the fight would have ended. That why the rematch is so needless.
Another thing that hurts the interest in the Jacobs-Mora rematch is the fact that Mora hasn’t fought since losing the fight. Mora has been out of the ring all this time, and there’s nothing to get excited about. At least if Mora had come back and beaten someone since his loss to Jacobs, you could say that he’s earned the rematch for a title shot.
Mora hasn’t done anything to deserve another world title shot. If you consider getting stopped in the 2nd round as earning a rematch, then I guess you could say he’s earned in that way. It’s a joke. I think it cheapens the WBA title to have Jacobs fighting a guy that he already beat, who has been out of the ring since then.
It’s not fair to Jacobs to have to fight Mora again, and it’s not fair to the fans, which see Jacobs tied down with another pointless fight. Mora should have had to earn the rematch by beating one of the WBA’s top 15 contenders such as Tureano Johnson, Peter Quillin, Chris Eubank Jr, Ryota Murata, Jason Quigley, or Alfonso Blanco. I don’t think Mora could beat any of those guys, but at least if he fought them, you could make an argument that he deserved a rematch. Losing by a 2nd round knockout is not earning a title shot in my book.
This rematch is bad news for Jacobs, 29, because the WBA president Gilberto Mendoza said recently that he plans on ordering a fight between Jacobs and WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for later this year. Instead of Jacobs getting a good opponent that can help him stay sharp and work on his craft, he’s got another mismatch against the aging Mora. This is not going to be any kind of a tune-up for Jacobs, and believe me, he’s going to need to be sharp if he wants to have a chance against Golovkin.