By Victor Salazar
Brooklyn, New York- Expert analyst Al Bernstein has been around boxing for decades. The Showtime commentator gave his assessment of the year that was in boxing in 2015. The two biggest fights in the sport were made (Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez). But even with that Bernstein says 2013 was a better year.
“2015 was a pretty good year,” Bernstein told BoxingScene.com. “2013 was the best year boxing has had in a while and in 2014, boxing didn’t capitalize on it. 2015 been kind of a shaking our process. We’ve seen the whole PBC [Premier Boxing Champions] experiment. The landscape of the business changed. The terms of the product is not as good as 2013 but it was still a good year.”
2015 was a changing of the guard. With Mayweather and Pacquiao seemingly all but gone, there is a void at welterweight, one of boxing’s glamour divisions.
Bernstein hopes that fights like Keith Thurman-Shawn Porter and Amor Khan-Kell Brook happen to bring one of those fighters into the spotlight.
“I think the winner of Porter-Thurman can emerge as the star of 147. I think if Khan Fights Brook, certainly there’s a star there in 2016. I’d love to see Kell Brook fight some U.S. welterweights.”
One guy Bernstein feels can bring star power to the sport if he gets bigger fight is Gennady Golovkin.
“I think he’s just got to find a way to get bigger fights. I think he’s a very interesting problem. Number 1, I don’t think a lot of middleweights want to fight him and number two the boxing politics also stand in the way but he can certainly grab the torch to stardom.”
