"Fighting Words" - Four Stories to Follow in 2017
by David P. Greisman
What a difference a year makes.
There were three fight cards in January 2016. All of the main events were mismatches on paper — Deontay Wilder vs. Artur Szpilka, Danny Garcia vs. Robert Guerrero and the rematch between Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal — though at least Wilder-Szpilka and Garcia-Guerrero entertained before reaching their expected conclusions.
January 2017 brings two rather notable collisions, plus a third card that could turn out to be interesting.
And no, Erislandy Lara vs. Yuri Foreman (Jan. 13 on Spike TV) isn’t one of them.
Rather, Jan. 14 has the two top super middleweights, James DeGale and Badou Jack facing each other in a unification bout, while their undercard features 130-pound titleholder Jose Pedraza defending his belt against undefeated prospect Gervonta Davis.
Jan. 28 has a rematch on Showtime of last year’s excellent featherweight clash, with Carl Frampton hoping to repeat his victorious performance against Leo Santa Cruz. On that undercard, lightweight titleholder Dejan Zlaticanin defends against come-backing undefeated former two-division titleholder Mikey Garcia, and Lee Selby defends his featherweight belt against Jonathan Victor Barros.
On the same day, over on HBO, 130-pound titleholder Francisco Vargas returns from some well-deserved time off following last year’s war with Orlando Salido. He will defend against Miguel Berchelt. On their undercard, another crowd-pleasing junior lightweight, former titleholder Takashi Miura, will face Miguel Roman for the right to fight for a title belt in the not too distant future.
That’s January in a nutshell. February also has a pair of title fights (Robert Easter vs. Luis Cruz, Rau'shee Warren vs. Zhanat Zhakiyanovon) on Feb. 10; the Adrien Broner-Adrian Granados fight supported by two title fights (Gary Russell Jr. vs. Oscar Escandon, Jermell Charlo vs. Charles Hatley) on Feb. 18, and Deontay Wilder returning from injury to defend his heavyweight title against Andrzej Wawrzyk on Feb. 25 (the same day as the unfortunate Miguel Cotto vs. James Kirkland pay-per-view).
And March has two more big fights between two of the top boxers in their respective divisions: Keith Thurman vs. Danny Garcia on March 4, and Gennady Golovkin vs. Daniel Jacobs on March 18.
There’s plenty to look forward to in the beginning of 2017. There’s also plenty to look for during the year.
Here are four storylines to follow:
Things Coming to a Head at 126, 147 and 168
Al Haymon’s vast stable reaches most of the weight classes. He is deepest in a handful of divisions. At last, many of his top fighters are beginning to face each other, and this may be the year that three divisions are either sorted out or come much closer to reaching that point.
At featherweight, last year brought Carl Frampton’s decision over Leo Santa Cruz, as well as Abner Mares outpointing Jesus Cuellar. However, Gary Russell Jr. and Lee Selby each only fought once. They had seemed positioned to face each other in a unification bout. That fight never came to fruition. Frampton-Santa Cruz 2 is a necessary rematch. Selby is fighting in January. Russell is fighting in February. The winners of two of those three bouts should go on to face each other.
The one fighter left out of that is titleholder Oscar Valdez, who is with Top Rank. Although Haymon and Top Rank settled their legal battle last year, don’t expect Valdez to be inserted into this unofficial tournament.
The same could be said for super middleweight, where James DeGale and Badou Jack are unifying belts in less than two weeks. In the wake of Carl Froch’s retirement, DeGale and Jack worked their way to the top of the rankings at 168. DeGale bested Andre Dirrell for a vacant belt in May 2015 and has since made two defenses against Lucian Bute and Rogelio Medina. Jack beat Anthony Dirrell for a title in April 2015, defended with a decision over George Groves and a draw that the judges should’ve seen as a victory over Bute.
A prospect named Callum Smith waits in the wings as mandatory challenger to the winner, though Jack may not hang around super middleweight much longer, win or lose. Also of note is Gilberto Ramirez, who unseated Arthur Abraham for a world title last April. He subsequently suffered an injury, hasn’t been back since, and may not be on a course to unify with the other two, nor with Tyron Zeuge of Germany.
Nevertheless, the DeGale-Jack winner produces a top guy at 168 for the first time in some time. However long that lasts is another question.
Down at 147, the former top fighter, Floyd Mayweather Jr., left the sport at the end of 2015. Manny Pacquiao fought and beat better opposition last year than his remaining counterparts did. This year, the other top welterweights are stepping up.
Danny Garcia-Keith Thurman is a very good start. Kell Brook was originally supposed to have a unification fight last year with since-deposed titleholder Jessie Vargas but instead went up to middleweight for a brave but unsuccessful challenge of Gennady Golovkin. Brook was thought to be done at 147 but may come back. He owes a mandatory to top contender Errol Spence. He may instead meet Amir Khan in a fight Brook’s wanted for ages.
Spence still deserves a big opportunity — and a tough test. Also out there is Shawn Porter, who wants to come back from his loss to Thurman last year. In an ideal world, the thaw between Haymon (who has Garcia, Thurman, Spence, Khan and Porter, plus others) and Top Rank (which has Pacquiao and Timothy Bradley) would lead to big fights, the kind that would lead to more worthy pay-per-views for Pacquiao than the ones he participated in last year.
A Crucial Third Year for Premier Boxing Champions
The PBC has been under a microscope since its launch. Once again, boxing media will not only be monitoring the fights put on by Haymon’s venture, but also the business side of things.
Most new enterprises lose money off the bat. The point is to turn that around as quickly as possible and go from being in the red to being in the black. PBC spent a huge chunk of money on fighter paychecks, television time buys, production and marketing. It doesn’t seem as if the advertising revenue and ticket sales have yet been anywhere near enough to make up for those costs.
The company has made adjustments. It’s wisely sent some of Haymon’s fighters overseas to fight in the United Kingdom, for example, so that other promoters are spending to keep these boxers active. It’s put on fewer fight cards and kept many fighters inactive or completely sidelined. There also are more big shows ending up on Showtime, which wants significant fights and will gladly pay to feature them on the network.
PBC’s launch ultimately led to lawsuits from Top Rank (since settled) and Golden Boy Promotions (ongoing). Paul Gift of combat sports website Bloody Elbow looked at some of the deposition highlights. In one of his reports, he noted that a PBC executive spoke of hoping to change the business model by the beginning of 2018, aiming to receive rights fees from a network or networks the way that other pro sports do, including the UFC.
This, then, would need to be the year where the ratings convince a network that it is worth it to pay for boxing content. HBO and Showtime do that on a much, much smaller scale. Broadcast television networks and basic cable stations have not tended to shell out for boxing at the cost necessary to pay what fighters have become accustomed to making, never mind to pay for as many fighters as PBC has under its banner.
Big Matches Should Happen, But Will They?
The promoters say that they want Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin to happen in 2017, should Golovkin get by Jacobs in March. There’s still no deal, something that would need to be reached pretty quickly afterward in order to set up a big fight later in the year, with a likely date on the traditional Mexican Independence Day weekend pay-per-view in mid-September. Canelo is likely fighting in May — he’s been in negotiations for a sideshow fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. — and that could tighten the timeline even more.
Sergey Kovalev’s team, meanwhile, wants a rematch with Andre Ward after his very close, disputed decision loss to Ward in November. They say they have a contractual right to the rematch. But the bout didn’t do very well on pay-per-view, a pay-per-view that needed to happen in order to cover the boxers’ paychecks. Would a sequel be able to pull in enough for it to happen again? It’s unlikely that either man would agree to take a pay cut.
Ward is now the top guy at 175. There’s also still a lineal champion in the division — Adonis Stevenson. He hasn’t done much of note of late. We waited years as Stevenson and Kovalev, or rather their teams, found ways for those fighters not to face each other.
Stevenson will probably face contender Eleider Alvarez later in the year. The fact that Golovkin-Jacobs wound up on HBO despite their various network and promotional affiliations may mean we could see Kovalev or Ward against Stevenson on HBO, and it’s also possible that the weak pay-per-view sales mean Kovalev or Ward would be able to fight on another network. That may be naively optimistic thinking.
Will Tyson Fury Return, and Will It Matter If He Does?
Tyson Fury is to blame for no longer having his three world titles. But the boxing industry sure seemed like vultures that swooped in to feast on his scraps.
One of Fury’s belts was vacated early on in his reign because he was contractually obligated to have a rematch with the man he’d just beaten, Wladimir Klitschko, rather than defend against one of his mandatory challengers. The other two titles were dropped last year when Fury pulled out of the rematch and took a sabbatical, thanks to struggles with mental illness that became public around the time he tested positive for cocaine.
Here’s where the heavyweight titles now are:
Deontay Wilder has held the WBC for two years. Fury’s promptly-vacated IBF went to Charles Martin last January, and then to Anthony Joshua in April. The WBO, vacated by Fury late last year, was picked up by Joseph Parker in his win over Andy Ruiz this past December. The WBA remains vacant, thanks to some maneuvering; the sanctioning body was convinced to offer it to the winner of April’s fight between Joshua and Wladimir Klitschko.
Fury may return this year. Even if he does, being the lineal champion doesn’t mean the rest of the division needs to have anything to do with him.
Wilder and Fury jawed at each other in the ring about a year ago, when Fury decided to make a scene following a Wilder victory. But Wilder will owe a fight to his mandatory challenger — still undetermined, but likely to be a rematch with Bermane Stiverne. Stiverne was supposed to face Alexander Povetkin late last year with the mandatory spot on the line, and then Povetkin tested positive for a banned substance.
Showtime, which has a contract with Joshua and which has featured Wilder in the past, likely would want a bout between those two. Parker seems on a course to face another Fury — Tyson’s cousin Hughie — or prospect Jarrell Miller. David Haye remains on the periphery, a former titleholder who returned from retirement but hasn’t taken on a heavyweight of consequence in ages. Luis Ortiz wants a heavyweight title shot. He doesn’t yet carry enough marketing power or leverage in order to force one to happen.
Fury is still king. A king is defined by how he rules. In boxing, that means defending it against the top challengers. Fury’s never even defended once before stepping away.
The top challengers right now can earn plenty of money and respect without him.
Fury’s had to rebuild himself outside of the ring. He’ll need to do the same in the ring. He’ll need to show that he can bring in money at the box office and on television/pay-per-view. And he’ll need to string together some victories to put pressure on the others, to make it known that while they were able to rise in his absence, they will need to go through him in order to finish their ascent.
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
