By Edward Chaykovsky
A number of fans have been critical about the Showtime Pay-Per-View undercard to the Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana rematch. The event is scheduled for September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
As part of the PPV, WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz will defend his title against unknown Manuel Roman, Alfredo Angulo returns against James De La Rosa and Miguel Vazquez will defend his IBF lightweight title against Mickey Bey.
Roman and De La Rosa are not well known and both of them are huge underdogs in their respective fights. Vazquez-Bey is a competitive fight, but the awkward champion is not exactly known for a having a TV friendly style.
Golden Boy Promotions VP, Eric Gomez, is not bothered by some of the criticism out there. He believes the public holds Golden Boy to a higher standard than most, based on some of the recent Mayweather undercards which featured fights like Danny Garcia vs. Lucas Matthysse and Amir Khan vs. Luis Collazo.
After the 9/13 PPV is in the books, Gomez feels confident the audience will be satisfied with the card.
"Well, I think that we're a little bit of victims of ourselves. We are always competing against ourselves because we've had such great undercards, but that's just part of doing a Mayweather fight. Mayweather insists he wants to have good fights, important fights, so I think that with this undercard here you have two world title fights. You have a very exciting fight and Alfredo Angulo's fight," Gomez said.
"I know that that's one of the things that [Golden Boy President] Oscar [De La Hoya] also is very much interested in, making sure that the entire card from top to bottom is stacked and we're making good fights, and I know that from working in the past with Floyd and his team, with Leonard [Ellerbe], that they expect the same thing."
"So they want action-packed fights. They want to do title fights, and it's very important for the consumer to have a stacked show from top to bottom, and we're going to continue to do that."
