By Chris Williams: Top Rank has signed a co-promotional deal with World Boxing Organization super bantamweight champion Isaac Dogboe (20-0, 14 KOs). This is said to be a long-term deal with the promotional company, according to Michael Benson, and there’s plans of the promotional company of having the 24-year-old Dogboe defending in his home country of Ghana. Dogboe currently resides in London, England, but he was born in Ghana.
Apart from a rematch with Jessie Magdaleno, the options for Dogboe are somewhat limited at 122. The bigger fights for Dogboe are at featherweight if he’s willing to move up to 126 to challenge featherweight champions Leo Santa Cruz, Gary Russell Jr., Oscar Valdez, Carl Frampton and Josh Warrington. Those guys would all have a big size advantage over Dogboe. If Dogboe stays at super bantamweight, his best options for interesting but not necessarily great fights would be against Magdaleno, Daniel Roman, Diego De La Hoya, Rey Vargas and Terence TJ Doheny. Hopefully for Dogboe’s sake, Top Rank doesn’t stick him in with Magdaleno four or five times in needless rematches with fights being scored poorly like we saw in the Manny Pacquiao vs. Juan Manuel Marquez rivalry. Those two former Top Rank fought each other four times, but Marquez was arguably robbed in the first three fights before he got fed up with the judges and knocked Pacquiao out in the fourth fight. Top Rank boss Bob Arum wanted to keep the Pacquiao-Marquez rivalry going for a fifth fight, but Marquez put his foot down and chose to not to fight Pacquiao after his knockout win over him in 2012 in their fourth fight. Dogboe should be fighting other guys instead of being stuck on the rematch cycle. He deserves better than to be stuck fighting the same guy again and again. The boxing fans deserve better as well.
Dogboe defeated Top Rank fighter Jessie Magdaleno by a 11th round knockout last April to win the WBO 122 pound title. Despite giving away a lot of size against Magdaleno, who looked like a lightweight after he rehydrated, Dogboe took over the fight in the second half of the bout and punished him until stopping him. Magdaleno had the size and power advantage over Dogboe, but not the engine. Magdaleno looked entirely depleted in the second half of the fight, which isn’t surprising because it must have difficult for him to make the 122 pound weight limit. If Magdaleno had been fighting in a weight class that supports his natural size like 135, he likely would have been fine in the second half of the fight. This is what happens when fighters drain themselves to fight a guy that is natural for the weight class. They start off well, but then gas out and struggle in the second half of the fights.
In Dogboe’s last fight, he destroyed 37-year-old Hidenori Otake by a 1st round knockout on August 25th in Glendale, California. The fight was embarrassingly bad, and it was predicted to be an awful one the moment it was made. Hopefully, Top Rank can do better than this with their match-making for Dogboe once they have their hands on the levers of making for his fights. Otake looked like he didn’t belong inside the ring with Dogboe.