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By Cliff Rold - It’s like a really violent game of red light, green light.
With seventeen weight classes only pounds apart, any spot on the scale can go from ho hum to hot damn fairly quick in the modern era. There is almost never a division devoid of high quality talent, but talent alone doesn’t move the pulse. High quality matches do. Given the geography of the sport, it can sometimes be that the two best in a given class compete so far apart on the globe that no market exists to generate a fight between them.
For a division to get hot, it needs points of intersection. Intersection is most easily arrived at with depth.
Look at the best divisions in boxing in the last few years and they all share depth in common. Jr. Welterweight, Jr. Middleweight, Super Middleweight, and Cruiserweight have been and are continuing to churn out solid fights and satisfied crowds because there are too many well-matched fighters in the same place for anything less.
Bantamweight had a wild run for a few years; Jr. Featherweight took some of the best of that, mixed it with what was already there, and had a fun sprint over the last year and a half.
This Saturday, from Macau, China, for the second time this year on HBO2 (5:30 PM EST/PST), fans will get a good look at a division as hot as any of the above and it may only be the beginning of a run. [Click Here To Read More]
With seventeen weight classes only pounds apart, any spot on the scale can go from ho hum to hot damn fairly quick in the modern era. There is almost never a division devoid of high quality talent, but talent alone doesn’t move the pulse. High quality matches do. Given the geography of the sport, it can sometimes be that the two best in a given class compete so far apart on the globe that no market exists to generate a fight between them.
For a division to get hot, it needs points of intersection. Intersection is most easily arrived at with depth.
Look at the best divisions in boxing in the last few years and they all share depth in common. Jr. Welterweight, Jr. Middleweight, Super Middleweight, and Cruiserweight have been and are continuing to churn out solid fights and satisfied crowds because there are too many well-matched fighters in the same place for anything less.
Bantamweight had a wild run for a few years; Jr. Featherweight took some of the best of that, mixed it with what was already there, and had a fun sprint over the last year and a half.
This Saturday, from Macau, China, for the second time this year on HBO2 (5:30 PM EST/PST), fans will get a good look at a division as hot as any of the above and it may only be the beginning of a run. [Click Here To Read More]
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