Plans are great. For any fighter. Especially a hugely promising heavyweight. But if Jared Anderson doesn’t come through what is, potentially at least, his toughest test to date tonight, it will all go out of the window. It’s no secret promoter Bob Arum is high on unbeaten heavyweight prospect/contender, Jared Anderson. And the Top Rank boss is perhaps – perhaps – making the mistake of looking too far ahead prior to Anderson’s fight with Ryad Merhy.
Merhy, a former cruiserweight titlist, has gone on record as saying he will derail “The Real Big Baby” express tonight in Corpus Christie, and that he will then win himself a bridgerweight title. Anderson of course disagrees, but he could be in tough tonight, in his first fight in eight months.
Arum, however, is plotting. He is busily plotting. And the Hall of Fame promoter has it all laid out for 24 year old Anderson.
“He’ll have three fights this year,” Arum said about Anderson when speaking with Sky Sports. “The second fight, we’re planning for Toledo, which is Jared’s hometown. Then next year, 2025, I hope to have him fight with all the top contenders. So by the end of 2025, the beginning of 2026, he is the inevitable challenger for the heavyweight title and at that point I hope he’s ready to become the heavyweight champion. We don’t want him to get in and fight a title fight, and win the title fight, and then not have the maturity to defend that title. Because of his young age, it will be a long reign. That’s our hope.”
For me, Arum touched on two key words there – “hope” and “maturity.”
Anderson for sure wasn’t acting too mature when he was having fun and games in his car a few months back, his crazy driving, shall we say, skills, seeing him in trouble with the law. As for “hope.” At this point, Anderson is a hope. He’s a heavyweight hope. Sure, Anderson could be the heir apparent, but so many fans, experts, pundits, whatever, say they need to see a whole lot more from Anderson before they are willing to say he is indeed the next big thing. A commanding win tonight would maybe go some ways towards this, while a win over a solid contender like, well, maybe a Deontay Wilder would convince us a lot more! Anderson has called Wilder out, by the way.
We always look out for new heavyweight stars, and Anderson may be the next guy. We will see in time.
For what it’s worth, I’m going out on something of a limb in picking Belgium’s Merhy (he is no Jean Pierre Coopman!) to score the upset tonight.
We’ll soon see. On all accounts.