By Allan Fox: Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) will be fighting on HBO Boxing on November 11 against unbeaten #6 IBF, #9 WBC, #12 WBO Luis Arias (19-0, 9 KOs) Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, New York.
Jacobs is moving over from Showtime to HBO as part of his new multi-fight contract with Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn. Jacobs, 30, is trying to put himself in position to fight the winner of the Gennady “GGG” Golovkin vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez rematch, which could take place as early as May 5 in 2018.
It’s not a given that Jacobs beats the 27-year-old Arias. In fact, Arias is a fight Jacobs could very well lose no matter how heavy he comes into the the contest. Luis Arias possesses major talent, and he’s a lot more powerful than his 47% KO percentage would suggest. You have to consider Arias a real live dog in this fight. Jacobs is a good fighter, but he’s not infallible. His chin is definitely fragile. Arias has the same kind of power that Dmitry Pirog possessed, and Jacobs was knocked cold by him in 2010. Don’t be surprised if Jacobs gets knocked out by Arias.
If Jacobs wants the Canelo vs. Golovkin winner, he’s going to need to blast Arias out of there on November 11, and then follow that win up with 2 or 3 huge wins over the likes of Jermall Charlo, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Demetrius Andrade and David Lemieux. Beating those guys will create a huge amount of hype about Jacobs. I don’t think Jacobs beats all of those guys. With Jacobs’ shaky chin, he’d be in huge danger against all of them. Arias might spoil the party before Jacobs even gets to the other guys.
Arias looked great recently in stopping Arif Magomedov in the 5th round on June 17. That was a good performance by Arias.
HBO is positioning themselves to have a good fight for the Canelo-Golovkin 2 winner by adding Jacobs to their team. However, that doesn’t mean that HBO will be able to make a fight between the Canelo-GGG winner face Jacobs. If Canelo beats Golovkin in the rematch, he’s not going to be forced to fight Jacobs just because HBO wants that fight.
Canelo and his promoters might choose to wait a while to let a fight against Jacobs marinate in the same way they waited 2 years for the Golovkin fight to build. Jacobs is still too young for Canelo to wait for him age before fighting him, so that’s not in play. Canelo and Golden Boy can’t wait Jacobs out for him to deteriorate before fighting him, which some boxing fans believe they did with Golovkin.
“I’m with the family, I’m back with HBO,”“It’s a great opportunity for me and my fans. This will be a great platform. It’s a new start for me.”
It can be an opportunity for Jacobs to fight on HBO, but it depends. He’s going to need to beat Arias, 5’11”, on November 11, and then someone else talented while he waits for the smoke to clear form the Golovkin vs. Canelo fights. Jacobs might find himself waiting until 2019 before he gets a shot against GGG or Canelo.
It’s unlikely that Jacobs will be able to land a fight against Canelo or Golovkin next year. Golovkin would like to fight Canelo 2 more times. That could eat up the entire year in 2018. If Golovkin beats Canelo, he might also face WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders. Jacobs is just a contender. There’s nothing that Jacobs has going for him right now other than him being signed with Matchroom Sport.
Jacobs needs to increase his popularity by beating Arias without controversy and without complaining if he loses to him, and then face someone good like David Lemieux, Demetrius Andrade, Sergiy Derevyanchenko or Jermall Charlo. Jacobs can’t keep fighting Sergio Mora and Caleb Truax type fighters. Jacobs needs to fight the good opposition only. Jacobs’ stint as the WBA middleweight champion was a major disappointment in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans, because he failed to do much other than beat Peter Quillin. Jacobs’ other title defenses during his 3-years as the WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion came against Sergio Mora and Caleb Truax. Jacobs fought Mora twice, which ate up an entire year of his career. Bumbling match-making like that hasn’t helped Jacobs’ popularity. He didn’t do much in his fights televised on Premier Boxing Champions other than milk his WBA title against weak opposition.
Jacobs’ new promoter Eddie Hearn seemed to give a huge hint that he had him under his wings in an interview this week, when he said that he thought Jacobs beat Golovkin in their fight last March. The way that Hearn was pouring praise over the head of Jacobs, it was as if he was talking about Anthony Joshua and not a fighter that had just been beaten by Golovkin. Jacobs did not look that good against Golovkin, to be honest. Jacobs ran for the first 6 rounds, and got knocked down. In the second half of the fight, Jacobs had moments, but he was hurt in the 10th, and staggered. The scoring was generous for Jacobs, but he clearly lost that fight. He didn’t win even with Golovkin boxing him instead of slugging. Jacobs couldn’t get past Golovkin’s jabs. All night long, Jacobs walked into Golovkin’s jab and was forced to reset himself.
”I had Danny Jacobs beating Golovkin. It was very close,” said Hearn to Fighthub. ”These things can go either way. Maybe he got lucky on that one. Justice wasn’t done. Danny Jacobs was knocked down, but he took all his shots. So is the power gone?” said Hearn in questioning whether Golovkin has lost his power because he couldn’t knock out Jacobs.
Jacobs wasn’t standing and fighting Golovkin. Jacobs was using the Kell Brook blueprint by moving most of the fight to avoid Golovkin’s punches. By the time Jacobs finally started to fight in the second half of the contest, he had to make up a ton of rounds to get back into the fight Unfortunately for Jacobs, he had too many rounds to make up and he ended up losing.
“We plan on keeping Danny nice and busy kicking off in November, then back in the spring with the obvious target of the Canelo vs. GGG winner,” said Hearn. “I believe Danny has proved himself as the top middleweight in world boxing.”
Hearn will need to have patience if he wants Jacobs to get a fight against the winner of the Canelo-GGG fight. Just because Hearn wants Jacobs to fight the winner of the Canelo vs. GGG fight doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Hearn is used to having his way in the UK in making pretty much any fight he wants happen. It’s a little different when you’re dealing with fighters outside of the UK. They have a different agenda, and there’s no real upside in fighting Jacobs, who has failed to win over a large fan base with the casual boxing fans in the U.S. Jacobs has a lot of hardcore boxing fans, but he’s still an unknown with the casual fans.
The U.S is a lot tougher market to crack to become a star in boxing than in the UK. You don’t become a star by beating up on a few soft guys like we saw with Anthony Joshua. You have to produce real wins against good fighters to become a star in the U.S. If Jacobs was fighting over in the UK, he’d likely be a tremendous PPV star by now without even having to fight anyone good. Look Joshua. He became a star in the UK just by beating paper champion Charles Martin. In the U.S, Jacobs was little more than the B-side opponent for Golovkin in their recent fight. Their fight didn’t bring in a lot of PPV buys on HBO earlier this year on March 18.
If Golovkin fights Jacobs again, it’s not likely to bring in a lot of buys on HBO PPV, if they even bother putting the fight on PPV. Their fight only brought in around 160,000 buys. Canelo might be able to bring in some PPV buys fighting Jacobs, but probably not much more than 300,000 buys. Canelo can’t fight Jacobs and expect to pull in over 1 million buys like he did in his fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. on May 6. Hearn is excited about signing Jacobs to a 3-fight deal, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to be able to get Golovkin or Canelo to fight him.