By Cliff Rold
There is always the gap.
There are fights on paper and there are fights in the ring.
Sometimes perception of the former turns into disappointment in the latter; we groan when it occurs but that’s not really so bad. No sport meets expectations every time. We get excited in the States for the Super Bowl every year.
The competitiveness of the game is hit or miss from year to year. The bad one’s get forgotten and the great one’s are cherished. The point is to let it play out on the field of play. If boxing is making the most desirable fights on paper, some will be great and some won’t.
The problem arises when the best fights on paper remain flights of imagination, video games to be played in the mind’s eye instead of sweat spraying into the ringside area. 2016, like any year, had its share of big fights.
It just hasn’t had enough of them.
Next year already looks different. Is it too early to get excited?
Here’s what we know. At heavyweight, super middleweight, middleweight, and welterweight, and featherweight, arguably the biggest, best, or both, available fight in each weight class is signed. They will all happen in the first third of the year.
One can make a case that the intended next four months may be better than the sum of all 2016’s parts.
We just haven’t arrived there yet. Boxing can pull the rug out from under the best-laid plans. It’s happened before. Who can recall that crushing dejection they felt when it was announced on the pay-per-view broadcast of Ray Mercer-Tommy Morrison that Mike Tyson had withdrawn from his showdown with Evander Holyfield for an alleged training injury just weeks out from the fight?
What about the excitement in the air when it was being said that, finally, Lennox Lewis and Riddick Bowe were going to get it on the ring only for Lennox Lewis to be upset by Oliver McCall?
Or how about the end of 2015 when Tyson Fury’s upset of Wladimir Klitschko and a newly emergent core of undefeated power punchers around him set the stage for a resurgence at heavyweight in 2016?
It’s never real until the bell rings.
If and when the bell rings, the biggest fight in the US will be at welterweight. PBC has had its hiccups but the two men who have been seen by the most eyeballs (minus Errol Spence after the Olympics) in their stable are Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia. If Showtime can manage another ‘Showtime on CBS’ event, it will easily be the most watched domestic fight of the year. They might not be the two best fighters in a division where Manny Pacquiao can still go, but with the right platform they will be seen by the most people, and in a fight that should be highly competitive.
March will be a busy month as it has now been announced that Gennady Golovkin and Daniel Jacobs have worked out their issues for a middleweight showdown. That will come on pay-per-view and consumers can decide whether they want to watch live or wait a week. The fight is still happening and there isn’t a better one to be made at 160 right now.
Does that make it a great fight? Not necessarily. Jacobs comes with question marks and middleweight is lacking in depth, but if you can only make the fights that are there, well, this is the fight that is there.
Before we even get to that, in January we’ll see a rematch at featherweight between Carl Frampton and Leo Santa Cruz and super middleweight unification between Badou Jack and James DeGale. We already know how good Frampton and Santa Cruz can be together. It’s hard to imagine their rematch not being entertaining. Jack-DeGale is the sort of high skilled sleeper that looks good on paper and could still quietly exceed expectations.
The big daddy, likely to be the biggest fight in the world in 2017 depending on what follows it in the division, is the heavyweight showdown. Anthony Joshua-Wladimir Klitschko has a chance to break UK attendance records and when the global viewing numbers come in we can expect a monster number.
There are other solid fights already made for 2017 that should further anticipation. These are the tip of the spear. Will they all be good? It remains to be seen.
At least they are all made.
It doesn’t mean every fight announced so far for next year is a corker. Erislandy Lara-Yuri Foreman and Miguel Cotto-James Kirkland are certainly taking their share of barbs. The difference is it often felt in 2016 like we were getting more of fights like those and less of the stuff that 2017 has front loaded into the year.
So, yes, feel free to get excited.
But also feel free to cross your fingers the schedule can hold together.
Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
