By Allan Fox: Daniel “Miracle Man” Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) will be taking part in a press conference on Tuesday, October 3 in New York to announce his first fight with Machroom Sport promotions against unbeaten Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) on November 11 on HBO Boxing at the Nassau Colisseum in Uniondale, New York.
This is the first fight of a multi-fight deal with British promoter Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Sport. Hearn is confident that with the help of HBO, he can get Jacobs a rematch against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin or a fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Either way, Hearn wants Jacobs to fight the winner of the expected May 5th rematch between Canelo and Golovkin.
Before then, Hearn wants to match Jacobs, 30, against former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux in early 2018. Hearn feels that by the time he’s finished with his job of promoting Jacobs, he’ll win back his WBA title, and then capture all the titles in the 160-lb. division. Hearn wants to turn Jacobs into a pay-per-view attraction before he’s done with him.
Hearn has some lofty plans for Jacobs, who fought in a safety-first manner against Golovkin for most of their fight on March 18. Jacobs lost the fight by a close 12 round unanimous decision because of him being knocked down by GGG in round 4, and not fighting hard in the first 6 rounds. Hearn says Jacobs deserved the victory over Golovkin, and he believes whole hardly that Jacobs will beat him in a rematch.
Like a lot of promoters after they sign a good fighter, Hearn is thinking of the potential greatness that Jacobs can achieve. Hearn is seeing the upside. He’s not seeing the downside. Jacobs has failed in the past in losses to Dmitry Pirog and Golovkin. Jacobs is a good fighter, but he has a chin problem that he’s had since his amateur days, and he hasn’t improved in that area.
Soft match-making has arguably disguised Jacobs’ issues with his punch resistance, but they’re still there. Golovkin dropped Jacobs with one of the few hard punches he hit him with in the fight. Jacobs was on the run almost the entire fight.
Just 4 fights ago, Jacobs was dropped in the 1st round by Sergio Mora in 2015. Jacobs was badly hurt. It wasn’t a flash knockdown. He was hurt. Jacobs got back up and stopped Mora in the 2nd round after he suffered an ankle injury, but it was not a satisfactory performance from the “Miracle Man.”
Luis Arias is a good fighter with excellent boxing skills and power. If Jacobs overlooks this guy, he could be in trouble on November 11. Jacobs isn’t that kind of talent to assume that he’s going to walk through a solid young fighter like Arias. The 27-year-old Arias is younger than Jacobs, and coming off a sensational 5th round knockout win over Arif Magomedov on June 17.
Magomedov is a respectable puncher with power that isn’t too far removed from that of Jacobs. He didn’t have the hand speed, boxing skills and combination punching that Arias possessed. Hearn could be brought down to earth in a second if Jacobs gets knocked out by Arias. It wouldn’t be surprising to a lot of boxing familiar with Jacobs, because he’s not strong in the chin department.
The book on Jacobs is he struggles when he’s backed up by aggressive fighters that throw combinations. Jacobs falls apart. It happened against Pirog and it happened against Golovkin when he attacked him hard briefly in round 4 of their fight last March.
In the amateurs, Russian Matt Karobov backed Jacobs up with combinations and beat him. Jacobs loses power when he’s forced to back up. Jacobs is a lot better when he’s the guy coming forward against an opponent that is fighting at a slow pace.