FanPost

Is GB/Showtime Hurting Their A Side Fighters By Giving Them Mismatches?


So far in 2014, Golden Boy Promotions and Showtime have gotten lucky booking one sided mismatches and getting rewarded with a good fight in return. Some of these one sided match ups resulted in fight of the year candidates such as Lucas Matthysse vs. John Molina Jr., and Robert Guerrero vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai. Some of these one sided mismatches were complete duds such as Adrien Broner vs. Carlos Molina, and Abner Mares vs. Jonathan Oquendo.

With all of these one sided mismatches on paper, is Golden Boy promotions and Showtime doing these fighters a disservice by matching them so soft? If we take a look at all of the times GB/Showtime paired someone soft the "A" side fighters stock actually takes a dive.

Danny Garcia looked spectacular in his victory against the machine Lucas Matthysse. After that stellar performance, people were mentioning Danny Garcia as maybe a potential Mayweater opponent. After his big performance against Matthysse, Danny Garcia and his team matched him up with a fighter with a lot less star power in Mauricio Herrera. During that fight, Danny Garcia did not look good in his fight and many people had thought Garcia had lost. Unfortunately Mauricio Herrera had two fights, one against Danny Garcia and another against the Puerto Rican crowd and the judges, he won the first fight but lost the second. preceeding the Herrera fight, no one was mentioning Danny Garcia anymore as a potential Mayweather opponent. Danny Garcia is matched even more soft against a non ranked fighter in Rod Salka.

Gary Russell Jr. has been a good prospect on the rise, the only thing was his opponents were relatively unknown fighters. Many fans criticized the lack of skill in Russell opponents and wanted him to get better competition. Golden Boy has pacified Gary Russell and finally gave him a real opponent in Vasyl Lomachenko. During that fight Russell was outclassed by Lomachenko. Lomachenko before his fight against Russell fought for a title against Orlando Salido. In that fight Salido used veteran tactics along with low blows and being a lot heavier than Lomachenko. Lomachenko got some championship experience that Russell lacked and that is what got Lomachenko the victory.

Lackluster wins and losses aren't the only ways to hurt a fighters stock. Believe it or not, having devastating knockout wins can hurt a fighters public perception and we see this in the case of Deontay Wilder. Deontay Wilder is an American heavyweight prospect who has a 31-0 record with 31 knockouts. The only opponent that Wilder has faced that people actually know is Malik Scott and Wilder knocked Scott out in his first combinations. Many fans feel Wilder has been match soft and will be exposed when he fights better opposition. Wilder will get his chance because he is next in line to fight for Bermane Stiverne's WBC title.

You can keep going on and on with fighters whos stock went down because of these mismatched fights. Abner Mares's stock took a hit in his fight last week, even the best fighter in the world Floyd Mayweather has been criticized for not fighting the best opposition available. We have been waiting too long for for Mayweather to fight Pacquiao and in his 3 fights with Showtime only one fight got people really interested. With Mayweather choice of Marcos Maidana again, it seems like the easy way out to get a easy payday. When fighters fight the best guys, fans will respect and support them and the journalist wont have anything to say (real journalist not the youtube journalist).

Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated recently had an article with Showtime's Stephen Espinoza talking about the one sided mismatches, and whether or not Mayweather's event were a success (here is the link to the article)

http://www.si.com/boxing/2014/07/09/showtime-stephen-espinoza-interview-floyd-mayweather-canelo-hbo

FanPosts are user-created content written by community members of Bad Left Hook, and are generally not the work of our editors. Please do not source FanPosts as the work of Bad Left Hook.