If you haven't really looked over the upcoming fight schedule, or if you just don't pay too close of attention (if so, start), then you might not have noticed there are a lot of big fights coming up.
Diaz-Katsidis has Fight of the Year candidate written all over it. Casamayor-Marquez is a major fight at 135 pounds, and will showcase two of this generation's best and often least appreciated fighters. Campbell-Guzman that same night will be the end of the trash talking and the test of just how "for real" Nate Campbell is.
You move on, and you have the star showdown between Mosley and Mayorga, followed by Tarver-Dawson, Peter-Vitali Klitschko (ha!), and Pavlik-Hopkins.
November is filling up quickly. Calzaghe-Jones is rescheduled for the 8th, and Jermain Taylor returns, tentatively, against someone on the 15th. On the 22nd, Ricky Hatton faces slickster American Paulie Malignaggi in Vegas. December will feature the final bout in the storied career of Oscar de la Hoya.
So did August just fall off the map for boxing's matchmakers and networks?
Granted, the Olympics are coming, but when's the last time America really cared about the Olympics? Be honest--when's the last time YOU really cared about the Olympics? The ratings have been crap for years. In a world that is chock full of TV sports, the Olympics just aren't what they used to be.
The biggest fight this coming month is between Zab Judah and Joshua Clottey, a fading star perhaps on his last legs and a welterweight grinder. It's a Boxing After Dark event for HBO on August 2, and of course it will go up against a Showtime card featuring Vic Darchinyan's bid for another title against Dimitri Kirilov.
Showtime has a Shobox on the 1st, main evented by Pawel Wolak-Ishe Smith, and ESPN2 is featuring Fulgencio Zuniga-Sebastien Demers the same night.
Past that, there are some decent ESPN cards (Joel Julio and Joe Greene hit the ring on the 13th, Cloud-Gonzalez and Andy Lee on the 8th), and there's a minor PPV headlined by the Calderon-Cazares rematch on the 30th.
The rest of the month is barren. If you consider Calderon-Cazares a major fight (it's important, and it'll be good, but it also won't be seen by very many people), then that makes for a grand total of -- arguably -- three big fights this month, two of which are on the same night and the other on a pay-per-view geared toward the hardest dying of the diehards with a 108-pound main event.
Dog days, indeed.
It's a shame that the sport just hit a major success with the much-hyped and successfully delivering Cotto-Margarito war, and now there's really nothing to follow it. There might be some good fights; I could see Judah-Clottey being quite entertaining if Zab comes to fight, because he still has hand speed and enough power to deal with the tough Clottey. But there's not a single fight coming up this month that you HAVE to see.
It's like a month of intermission, essentially. Get ready for...nothing, really.