By Keith Idec
When Luis Arias looks up and down Daniel Jacobs’ record, he isn’t impressed.
As Arias prepares for his own middleweight match against Jacobs on Saturday night, the undefeated fighter from Milwaukee pointed out that he believes the “overrated” Jacobs has gotten too much credit for his most noteworthy wins.
“I just look at his opponents, the guys he’s beat,” Arias said during a recent conference call. “To be that high and have this big of a name in the game, who has he really beat? And the only name that I can see that I can really give him credit for beating is [Peter] Quillin. But even Quillin, to me, was overrated. What happened to Quillin since that fight?”
Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) scored a surprising first-round technical knockout against Quillin in December 2015 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, Jacobs’ hometown. Quillin (33-1-1, 24 KOs), a former WBO middleweight champion, has fought just once since Jacobs stopped him.
Beyond Quillin, Arias is even less impressed with Jacobs’ list of conquests. The confident underdog thinks Jacobs is living off his competitive performance in a unanimous-decision defeat to IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) on March 18 at Madison Square Garden.
Golovkin floored Jacobs in the fourth round of that bout, but Jacobs recovered and gave Golovkin trouble with his size, speed, boxing ability and athleticism. Jacobs drew praise far and wide for testing Golovkin in their 12-round fight, and recently signed exclusive contracts with promoter Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing USA and HBO.
“He fought Sergio Mora twice,” said Arias, who’s 18-0 (9 KOs). “Sergio Mora was in ‘The Contender.’ And ‘The Contender’ happened when I was like 8 or 9 years old. You know what I mean? How did he get the Sergio Mora fight twice? And then, after that, I mean, I just don’t really see the top-notch guys he’s beat. I haven’t seen him in any dogfights.
“Like I’ve seen him in a lot of fights where everything benefited him. You know? And then, once again, he had two opportunities to be a world champion, where the stage got bright, the lights got big, and he dropped the ball [against Golovkin and former WBO champion Dmitry Pirog]. He’s getting credit for just simply not getting knocked out by Triple-G. And Eddie Hearn gave him a deal for it. And HBO did, too, because of Eddie. So like I said, man, you tell me who Danny Jacobs has beat.”
Jacobs, 30, is heavily favored to beat Arias, 27, in the main event of HBO’s tripleheader Saturday night from Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale, New York (10 p.m. ET/7 p.m. PT).
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.