By Chris Williams: IBF World super flyweight champion Jerwin ‘Pretty Boy’ Ancajas (28-1-1, 19 KOs) is being groomed by promoter Bob Arum on ESPN in hopes of making him into a star, according to Lance Pugmire.
The idea is to out the exciting 25-year-old Filipino knockout artist on ESPN to build up his fan base fighting in front of large viewing audiences. However, it may be slow going for Ancajas is being built into a star, as Arum isn’t interested in having him take part in the highly popular SuperFly series on HBO in which he would be facing very good fighters on televised fights on HBO. For some reason, Arum doesn’t want to have Ancajas fight in the SuperFly series.
”There’ll be plenty of time to fight those guys later on,” Arum said to Lance Pugmire about Ancajas.
It seems like a backwards move by Arum not to have Ancajas fight in the SuperFly series, as he would be competing against the best fighters in the 115 lb. division like Srisaket Sor Rungvisai, Juan Francisco Estrada, Carlos Cuadras, Naoya Inoue, Khalid Yafai and Roman Gonzalez. Those are the names that Ancajas should be fighting if he wants to become popular in a hurry.
Ancajas isn’t going to become a big star beating little known fighters like his next opponent Israel Gonzalez (21-1, 8 KOs), who he’ll be facing next week on February 3 on ESPN at the Bank of America Center in Corpus Christi, Texas. Arum might be thinking that if he puts Ancajas in enough fights against over-matched opposition on ESPN, then the casual boxing fans will get excited at seeing him.
I don’t know if that’s going to be the case. The fans want to see competitive fights involving talented fighters, not guys that are being brought in to make a guy look better than he is. Ancajas needs to grow as a fighter by facing the best available opposition. I’m not sure that’s going to happen if Arum is resistant to letting Ancajas fight in the SuperFly series against the best fighters.
The casual boxing fans probably don’t have much of any idea who the good fighters are at 115. It’s possible that if Arum feeds Ancajas with enough over-matched fringe contenders, the casual fans will get excited about him like they did with Manny Pacquiao when his fights started being shown in the U.S. There’s a significant difference though with how Pacquiao was turned into a star and the way Arum is approaching building Ancajas into a household name.
When Pacquiao began to have his fights televised in the U.S in the early 2000s, he was fighting guys like Juan Manuel Marquez, Marco Antonio Barrera, Emmanuel Lucero, Fahsan 3K Battery, Hector Velazquez, Oscar Larios, Jorge Solis and David Diaz. In other words, Pacquiao wasn’t spoon fed by Arum. That’s why the U.S boxing public got excited about Pacquiao. But with Ancajas, he’s facing a #9 IBF Israel Gonzalez on February 3. Before that, Ancajas was matched against Jamie Conlan and Teirus Kinoshita. Those were 2 mismatches. Ancajas is not being matched the same Pacquiao was. You have to wonder if Ancajas’ prime is going to be wasted by being matched against guys that have no chance against him.