Comments Thread For: Lucas Matthysse vs. Tewa Kiram in Play For WBA 'Regular' Belt

[Thetruthiserrol]

Agreed. 2017 wasnt a great year for boxing at all, it's just all the corrupt people involved in boxing found an opportunity to praise themselves and pretend like they're not running the sport into the ground, so they took it. They are celebrating a slight improvement and pretending it's a big one or that any of the sport's major issues have been solved. They haven't. Canelo-GGG was supposed to be the cure for what May-Pac turned out to be, but instead it just turned into May-Pac 2.0. GGG was no more in his prime by the time it happened than Pacquiao was against Floyd. Heck, at least even old Pacquiao was able to stagger Floyd in the 4th round or whatever it was. That's more than either GGG or Canelo were able to do LOL.

The Kovalev-Ward rivalry also took place 1-2 years too late, seeing as Kovalev gassed badly against Isaac Chilemba before he ever got to Ward, and considering he was 33 and 34 years old in those fights, which is, once again, and I hate to sound like a broken record but it's true, not prime age for athletes in almost any sport, and particularly not for offensive boxers like Kovalev who rely on high punch output, which depends on extreme stamina and other prime athletic traits to succeed. It also relies on quick snappy combinations that can actually land and start to wear down the opponent before they can counter you, which is also something tied to stamina (arm-weariness became an issue for Kovalev against Chilemba, something we didn't see during his prime age 31 and younger).

Chocolatito-Inoue didn't happen during Chocolatito's prime, probably because HBO sees much more money in the younger Inoue staying undefeated. Not that Chocolatito would have beaten him anyway, but I guess when money is on the line, ANY amount of risk is unacceptable to these networks and promoters, even if that's ruining the sport. I'm sure no matter what HBO claims, they were more than happy to wait until GGG aged, too, before making the Canelo fight, because Canelo is younger and more marketable.

It's ruining the product, but they don't care so long as their PPV products remain protected. In 2017, that didn't change a bit.

Yep. Spot on. The delaying of match-ups is damaging the sport. Take the 126lb division as an example. Al haymon has 3/4 champions -- LSC, GRJ and Lee Selby yet none of them have unified yet. It's got so bad that LSC didn't even fight his mandatory, Mares on Oct. 14, he chose to fight a shot Avalos. It's not just Haymon doing this though, it's every single promoter. Corrales could've unified with Berchelt (both with Golden Boy), yet HBO bought Corrales-Machado.

Regarding the GGG-Canelo situation, it seems as if Golden Boy are very willing to delay negotiations until after Saunders-Lemieux. I believe they are hoping that it's a great fight so that they can delay the GGG rematch until September. HBO are complicit since they will be making more money with the extra revenue from the PPV.

The only actual positive of 2017 has been the WBSS.

[285Kid]

Why couldn't that belt be up for Spence Jr vs Peterson? These Belt Organizations are just so unorganized

WBA regular can't be unifiy by rule only the WBA super... Lucas getting KO