By Jim Calfa: Highly ranked super middleweight contenders Daniel ‘Miracle Man’ Jacobs and John ‘The Gorilla’ Ryder will be headlining next month on DAZN on February 12th at the Alexandra Palace in London, England.
Jacobs will be coming off a 15-month layoff since his last fight against Gabriel Rosado in November 2020. For his part, Rosado last fought in September, beating Jozef Jurko.
The Jacobs vs. Ryder fight is part of DAZN’s unveiling of their eight-event schedule for 2022. While it’s certainly not the best of the headliner fights that DAZN is rolling out for the New Year, it’s not the worst. There are a couple that this writer would rank below this fight, but not by much.
‘The Gorilla’ Ryder is ranked #4 WBA #11 WBC, #14 WBO at super middleweight, and he needs a win to stay in position to get a title shot.
Ryder is an option for Canelo if he wins
A dream come true for the 33-year-old Ryder (30-5, 17 KOs) would be him outworking the fading ‘Miracle Man’ Jacobs to get a title shot against undisputed champion Canelo Alvarez.
With that said, it’s unclear whether Canelo (57-1-2, 39 KOs) will return to the 168-lb division to defend his four belts.
Canelo may choose to take a brief try at cruiserweight before moving to 175, but that’s still being decided by him and his trainer/manager Eddy Reynoso.
If Canelo returns to super middleweight, the winner of the Jacobs vs. Ryder fight will be able to challenge him for one of his titles.
The former IBF/WBA middleweight champion Jacobs (37-3, 30 KOs) has looked pretty well past it in his last two fights since getting a massive multi-million dollar payday against superstar Canelo Alvarez in May 2019.
Jacobs is coming into the fight with Ryder off the back of a highly controversial 12 round split decision victory over Gabe Rosado in November 2020 in Hollywood, Florida.
The Jacobs vs. Rosado fight was shown live on DAZN, and it looked like the judges gave the victory to the wrong fighter that night. Rosado wanted it more than Jacobs and outfought him, but the judges gave it to the A-side fighter Danny.
You can argue that if Rosado didn’t have 13 losses on his record going into the Jacobs fight, he would have been given the victory by the judges because he looked like the better fighter.
Some question whether Jacobs has lost his ambition due to the HUGE money he’s made and is just going through the motions now for the easy paydays he’s had since he won the lottery by getting the Canelo fight.
Does Jacobs have anything left?
Jacobs will be turning 35 next month on February 3rd, and although he still has his punching power, he’s looked timid at times in his last two fights since his loss to Canelo.
The New Yorker Jacobs is ranked #2 WBO, #3 WVC, #8 IBF, #10 WBA at 168, and he would like nothing better than to get a rematch with Canelo.
Jacobs narrowly lost a 12 round unanimous decision by the 116-112, 115-113, and 115-113.
Danny might have beaten Canelo if he’d started faster in the first half of the contest, as he gave those rounds away by fighting too passively. That was Jacobs’ downfall in his loss to Gennadiy Golovkin in 2017.
Despite having a significant size advantage over Golovkin, Jacobs put little effort into his offense in the first six rounds in that fight.
By the time Jacobs did start fighting with a sense of urgency beginning in the seventh, he was already well behind in the fight, having given away the first six rounds.
Although Jacobs fought well enough to win five of the last six rounds, he didn’t do enough to win them all. Hence, he wound up losing to GGG by a 12 round unanimous decision. After the fight, Jacobs complained that he should have been victorious.
Instead of taking a good look at the table and acknowledging that he had fought timidly in the first six rounds, Jacobs complained bitterly for a long time about how he deserved the victory. Like in the Canelo fight, Jacobs didn’t win because he gave away the first half in both contests.
If Jacobs counts on Canelo giving him a rematch, he should put that fantasy thought out of his head because it’s not going to happen. Canelo isn’t going to revisit a second fight with Jacobs, and it is remarkable how little the New Yorker has done since their battle in 2019.