SHO’s Espinoza: Santa Cruz-Frampton Part of Unofficial Tourney

by David P. Greisman

Showtime Sports executive Stephen Espinoza is excited about Saturday night’s featherweight title fight between Leo Santa Cruz and Carl Frampton, not only for what the bout itself could be on fight night, but also because of how it plays into the bigger picture.

“For me, Santa Cruz-Frampton is right up there with Thurman-Porter as one of the two most anticipated fights this year, primarily because it’s such a good matchup in style: two of the most aggressive fighters in the lighter divisions,” Espinoza told BoxingScene.com before the fighters weighed in at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. “I just don’t see any way this is not an exciting, all-action fight.”

Showtime’s sister station, CBS, was originally supposed to air another featherweight fight last month, but Abner Mares had eye issues to tend to and had to pull out of his bout against Jesus Cuellar on the undercard of Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter.

It’s a deep weight class, with a handful of boxers signed with powerful boxing adviser Al Haymon, with whom Showtime regularly works.

“One of the great things about the 126-pound division is that all the stars are sort of aligned to do a round-robin, unofficial tournament,” Espinoza said. “So [titleholders] Gary Russell Jr. and Lee Selby will both be attending the fight. That could easily happen in the near future. If Mares-Cuellar happens, then those two fights, the winners fight or the winners fight the winner of Santa Cruz-Frampton. Between those six guys, it’s great styles, young fighters in their prime, and they’re all ready to take each other on.”

And there’s an advantage to having that built-in storyline.

“One of the challenges with boxing is it is so unpredictable. There isn’t a regular schedule. The casual fan doesn’t know when to expect more fights, or really the context for any particular fight,” Espinoza said. “When you have a division set up with all the guys sort of circling each other, then we can do something that’s a little bit more logical.

“We can lay out the context and say, ‘These two guys are at ringside. They’ll probably fight. And then the winner can fight the winner of Santa Cruz-Frampton. It allows, both for the hardcore fan and the casual fan, to understand the context and give them something to anticipate.”

Espinoza believes it’s not just the context that leads to anticipation, but also the styles of the fighters.

“They’re all aggressive fighters, some a little bit more aggressive than the others. It’s tough to match the output of a Leo Santa Cruz,” Espinoza said. “But all of them are exciting fighters in their own way. So there’s really not anybody that you need to match carefully. You can throw any of those six guys in with another one and you’re almost guaranteed it’ll be a good style matchup.”

He said that all of those fights, should they be made, would end up on either Showtime or CBS.

“We’ve spent a lot of time setting up three divisions in particular —126, 147 and 154 — so that when we got to this year, and even in 2017, that there will be a progression of fights,” Espinoza said. He mentioned a May card that had multiple junior middleweight titleholders on it and how that helps build toward fights in the future.

“There’s a lot of exciting fights that can be done. It took a little time to set everybody up there, but now over the next six to 12 months, we’ll see the payoff,” he said. “And hopefully, with a little bit of luck, see some unifications in those two divisions [126 and 154] by the middle of next year.”

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