Who Can Wait for 2016?
Posted by: Cliff Rold on 12/9/2015 .
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By Cliff Rold
It might be a good fight; maybe even the best of their three. While it hasn’t been officially announced, it’s floating out there in the water pretty heavy. Many expect it to be announced Friday.
The thought of it has gathered a collective expression of “huh?”
Manny Pacquiao appeared to win about eight or nine rounds in his first fight with Timothy Bradley in 2012. He got the wrong end of a bad decision. Their second fight was better. Pacquiao still won about eight or nine rounds.
Case closed.
There’s really no unfinished business here.
We know who the better man is head to head.
By the time he fights again, Manny Pacquiao will be 37. Maybe they could bill this rubber match as ‘Keep going until Manny is too old to win eight or nine rounds.” Would that fit on a poster?
At 37, it’s not going to have much lasting impact on Pacquiao’s legacy either way. While he fell short against Floyd Mayweather, his career accomplishments and highlight reel will insure him a rocket ride to the Hall of Fame and a place with the immortals. He was one of the great ones.
Again, case closed.
That doesn’t mean his encore has to generate enthusiasm. Even if it’s not Bradley, if the boxing gods smile and we get something like Pacquiao-Terrence Crawford, that’s Pacquiao looking down a class for suitable opposition. This is the price of boxing politics. Most of the best of the welterweight division does business on the Al Haymon side of the street. Unless Mayweather comes out of retirement and says ‘rematch,’ it’s unlikely Pacquiao will be doing business there.
The same is true for Bradley.
At least Pacquiao-Crawford would be something new set against the timeless tale of young lion versus aging.
It’s a shame because matches like Pacquiao or Bradley against Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter, or Danny Garcia would all be fresh, exciting, and unpredictable. It’s not like that side of the street is killing it in the division either. Garcia will follow his win over faded Paulie Malignaggi with a showdown against faded Robert Guerrero. Thurman and Porter have been rumored headed towards each other but nothing has come to fruition yet.
This sort of stale sameness isn’t isolated to welterweight. It plagues too much of the boxing landscape.
After taking a half a year more than needed to make Canelo Alvarez-Miguel Cotto, it might take another year or more for a middleweight title showdown with Alvarez and Gennady Golovkin.
We can hope for better.
Hope is always around in abundance.
Light heavyweights Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson have danced around each other for a couple of years, taking turns allowing network roadblocks between them. They are jawing about a summer showdown. We’ve heard that before. Kovalev at least is on a clear enough path to former super middleweight champion and Adonis Creed opportunity maker Andre Ward.
Before that, we get to see Kovalev face Jean Pascal again after a) already knocking him out and b) Pascal being luck to get by Yunieski Gonzalez. Ward will take another tune up or two after long inactivity. Nothing could go wrong on the road to Kovalev-Ward of course. Waiting multiple fights at a time always works out in boxing.
Right?
Man, what a war that Yuriorkis Gamboa-Juan Manuel Lopez was.
That’s not to say a little waiting is a bad thing. Sugar Ray Leonard didn’t go straight from Roberto Duran to Tommy Hearns. He took a fight in between.
He took on tough, undefeated Ayub Kalule and won the Jr. Middleweight crown.
That’s some quality time killing.
Compare that to a report out of ESPN Deportes on Tuesday. The most anticipated fight at flyweight in the last couple years, and in arguably decades, is a rematch between lineal/WBC champ Roman Gonzalez and WBA/WBO titlist Juan Francisco Estrada. They may face off again, finally, by the summer.
That would be great.
According to the ESPN Deportes report, before we get there, Gonzalez might fight former lineal 108 lb. titlist Giovani Segura and Estrada could fight a rematch with Milan Melindo. Neither fight is sealed. Perhaps better angels will prevail. If not, if the reports turn into signed contracts, here’s what we have:
Gonzalez against a guy who was eviscerated by Estrada in September 2014 and hasn’t fought since; Estrada against a guy who he beat about ten rounds to two in 2013 who lost miserably two fights ago in a title fight at 108.
Both guys can do better.
Boxing can do better.
In some cases it will.
At Jr. featherweight, we can look forward to February. Scott Quigg and Carl Frampton will unify a pair of titles in what could be an early candidate for fight of the year. It could be the UK version of some of the classics we’ve grown accustomed to in a division that has produced Wilfredo Gomez-Lupe Pintor, Erik Morales-Marco Antonio Barrera I, Somsak Sithchatchawal-Mahyar Monshipour, and the first three fights of the Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez rivalry.
The winner probably won’t fight legitimate division king Guillermo Rigondeuax. If the first fight is good enough, no one will care much on that one. They’ll want to see a rematch.
None of this means we shouldn’t look forward to the year ahead. 2015 produced plenty of gems few saw coming. Jr. lightweight had three fight of the year candidates in Roman Martinez-Orlando Salido I & II and Francisco Vargas-Takashi Miura. Both are likely to have sequels in 2016.
Krzysztof Glowacki-Marco Huck turned out the lights at cruiserweight, Andrezej Fonfara-Nathan Cleverly left us breathless at light heavyweight, and James DeGale-Lucian Bute showed old dogs still have new tricks at super middleweight. Bantamweight gave us a debatable outcome but a competitive affair between longtime stalwarts Shinsuke Yamanaka and Anselmo Moreno. We got the drama of Tyson Fury unseating Wladimir Klitschko (even if the fight wasn’t so great) for the heavyweight crown.
And, hey, it wasn’t a thriller but at least we finally saw Mayweather-Pacquiao.
There are always plenty of highlights. However, surprises we didn’t know we wanted are never the same as getting what we really want to see. The fights we can’t wait to see. There’s been a bit too much of the former lately and not enough of the latter.
Right now, too much of 2016 is shaping up as something we can wait for. It looks like a year where a lot of waiting will have to be done.
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