If you ask IBF light welterweight champion Lamont Peterson (31-1-1, 15 KO’s) if he’s worried about what he’s going to be facing this Saturday night when he steps inside the ring to mix it up against the power punching Lucas Matthysse (33-2, 31 KO’s), he’d probably laugh because he has absolutely no fear of Mattysse at all.
Indeed, Peterson is so confident in his ability to take Matthysse’s shots and beat him that it’s hard to believe in him. Peterson looks, talks and acts like a winner.
Floyd Mayweather Jr’s team reportedly gave WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez the option to fight him at 147 lbs. on September 14th if he wants to get the biggest payday of his career. Canelo is only 22-year-old and has no pay per view history behind him to show that he’s a proven money maker.
Canelo’s not shown yet that he’s someone that can make money, and therefore he’s not position to dictate what weight the fight will take place on. Some of Canelo’s fans think Mayweather is ducking the fight with him by asking him to come down to 147 instead of accommodating the 22-year-old by moving up to 154, so that Canelo can make weight and rehydrate to 170+ the night of the fight and enjoy a 20-25 pound weight advantage over Mayweather. When it gets down to it, Canelo’s only chance of beating Mayweather is to use his light heavyweight-sized weight to crush him.
Promoter Eddie Hearn is interested in matching his very lucky fighter WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns (36-2, 11 KO’s) against former lightweight contender Gavin Rees (37-2-1, 18 KO’s) this coming September. Rees is coming off of a 5th round knockout loss to WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner last February in a fight where Rees looked terrible in before getting knocked out.
Burns got lucky last Saturday night in beating Jose Gonzalez (22-1, 17 KO’s) in a 9th round stoppage when Gonzalez quit on his stool after the 9th round. Gonzalez said after the fight he didn’t know that he had such a wide lead and that if he knew that he wouldn’t have quit.
#8 WBC Manuel Charr (23-1, 13 KO’s) has a near hopeless dream of getting a rematch against WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko, who made short work of Charr in stopping him in the 4th round last year in September. Charr has it in his head that all he has to do to get another nice paying bout against Vitali is for him to beat David Haye (26-2, 24 KO’s) next month in their fight on June 29th in the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK.
Charr said to Sky Sports “He’s [Vitali] never fought David Haye and Haye has called him out for three years now. Vitali said he wanted to knock him out, shut him up and all this other rubbish, but he never did anything about it. The fight has never happened. I won’t let Vitali do the same to me. I want my rematch and to get it I have to knockout David Haye on June 29th.”
Eddie Hearn has ruled out what would be a lucrative fight between his fighter IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch and 48-year-old IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins this year in September. Hearn doesn’t want Froch to be fighting guys that are slightly bigger than him like Hopkins because he sees it as putting Froch in a difficult position.
Hearn said this to Sky Sports News “It’s flattering [that Hopkins wants to fight Froch]. Hopkins understands the value of a fight with Froch, but I don’t think Carl needs a fight at a catchweight…he’d be at a big disadvantage.”
Manny Pacquiao (54-5-2, 38 KO’s) hasn’t had an easy fight since his one-sided 12 round unanimous decision win over a completely shot Shane Mosley two years ago in May, 2011. Since that fight, Pacquiao has gone downhill himself and looked bad in his two fights against Juan Manuel Marquez and his fight with Tim Bradley.
Pacquiao lost two of those fights, but you can make strong argument that he deserved to lose three of them because his win over Marquez in November 2011 was a controversial one. Pacquiao now will be fighting Brandon Rios (31-1-1, 23 KO’s) on November 24th in Macau, China.
Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is holding September 14th for an HBO pay per view fight between WBO welterweight champion Tim Bradley (30-0, 12 KO’s) and Juan Manuel Marquez (55-6-1, 40 KO’s) unless Floyd Mayweather Jr. decides to fight on that date, in which case Arum will move the Bradley-Marquez fight to another day, according to Steve Kim.
The Bradley-Marquez fight will take place at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the fight isn’t nearly big enough to compete against a Mayweather fight. Arum has no other choice but to move off the September 14th date if Mayweather fights unless he wants to have low numbers for the Bradley-Marquez fight in terms of buys.
WBA/WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez hasn’t fought at 147 in the 11 fights dating back to his win over a tiny Jose Miguel Cotto back in May of 2010, but if Canelo wants a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. then he’s going to have to find a way back down to that weight because that’s what he’s going to have to do in order to get the big payday fight he’s been harping about for ages.
Let’s be honest about this; Canelo needs Mayweather much more than Mayweather needs Canelo. Mayweather is going to get his $30 million each fight no matter who faces him in his next five fights. Mayweather’s got that guaranteed cash, and besides that he’s already a huge, huge draw. He’s the #1 money fighter in all of sports.
Curtis M. (Orlando, FL): Deontay Wilder seems to be catching steam, and lately there’s been talk of him facing Wladimir Klitschko. Do you give him a shot at winning if the fight were to happen within the next year or so?
Vivek W. (ESB): Wilder is one of the hottest rising prospects in the heavyweight landscape today. He has power, decent speed, and a little personality to sell himself. That being said, I have very mixed emotions on his chances if he were to face Wladimir Klitschko. I’m always very skeptical about fighters who enter the ring with so much knockout success in the past. Particularly young fighters on the rise. There’s always an untold story. In this case, I have the same questions. What happens when he faces someone who he can’t hurt, that also possess the power to hurt, and potentially even stop him?
We’ve seen IBF super middleweight champion Carl Froch (30-2, 22 KO’s) talk about retirement if he were to lose, and now WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (46-2, 35 KO’s) is saying he’ll retire if he loses to Froch in their fight this month on May 25th at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
I don’t know that I believe that Kessler will retire no matter how bad he looks in getting beat by Froch, but I do think it’s a smart way to market the fight. When you make the retirement threat, boxing fans seem to pick up interest in the fight thinking that it could be the last time they see a particular fighter making the threat.