Frank Martin (16-0, 12 KO) is on the road to title contention.

Michel Rivera (24-0, 14 KO) is too.

They won’t be fighting for a title on Saturday night (Showtime, 10 PM EST). Not a full title, a regular title, an interim title…none of the above.

No, the 27-year old Martin and the 24-year old Rivera are fighting on Saturday to get a step closer to contending and they’re doing it the old-fashioned way. They’re fighting to get ahead. Non-title fights like this didn’t used to feel rare. 

Times change.

The modern pattern too often is to fight into contention for a belt, picking off some names along the way if possible. Once a title shot is secured, if one wins the competition tends to go up. It’s really not that different from the way things used to be done in terms of competitive progression in the ring; there were just less titles to go around so it looked different in other eras. Now what we might see instead of beating contenders in pursuit of one or even two champs, the chase with so many belts around is to get a strap and then build to the ‘real’ title fights with elite competition in a unification. 

Rivera and Martin, both already ranked in Ring Magazine’s top ten at lightweight, don’t have that luxury at lightweight in 2022. It’s a point in favor of having the amount of unification we’ve seen at lightweight in recent years. There aren’t a lot of belts around to collect right now. There’s undisputed champion Devin Haney. There’s WBA sub-titlist Gervonta Davis.

And there’s a line behind them.

When a line forms, two choices emerge. Talented young fighters can get active where possible and wait their turn or they can chance one another to stand out from the crowd. 

Martin and Rivera have chosen door number two. It’s a real risk. Even if the fight is great (and it could be) and everyone is ready to see both men again (and we might), the defeated will have taken a step back. The victor will not only be a step closer on paper but also in public esteem. 

They’ll have earned it. 

People respect what is earned. 

Martin-Rivera isn’t happening in a vacuum. We’re seeing more of this type of matchmaking between hungry fighters outside the central title picture. In many of those cases, there might be interim or secondary titles on the line but it’s still a case where easier paths aren’t chosen. In 2022, the fight of the year might well have been Sebastian Fundora-Erickson Lubin. They scrapped for an interim belt but everyone knew what the real goal was.

Fundora-Lubin happened on the road to Jermell Charlo-Brian Castano II. An undisputed champion was coming and now is here. Fundora, who stopped Lubin, will watch Charlo face Tim Tszyu first but there’s every reason to think he’s got next after that.

Boxing fans are still waiting for Terence Crawford-Errol Spence. This week, the WBA sub-title got sent to purse bids for a fight between Eimantas Stanionis and Vergil Ortiz. They’ll want to beat each other but the winner will have an eye on Spence, Crawford, or the winner of any superfight that occurs between the two. And they’ll have a hell of a case to get them.

Boxing might be a business but it’s also a sport. When it imbalances too far to the latter, boxers can be abused by the system and not given enough of their worth. When it imbalances too far to the former, fans get less than they invest in and we see a lesser product full of too much wasted youth and time. 

Martin-Rivera is a fight that threads the needle of that balance, carrying sporting and economic risk and reward. It won’t waste anyone’s time and will make the most of both men’s youth. Either man may one day be a champion or both could fall short.

Neither will show up at their first title shot with anyone wondering how bad they want it.  

Cliff Rold is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene, a founding member of the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, a member of the International Boxing Research Organization, and a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America.  He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com