Happy Holidays, boxing fans!
We’ve made it through almost another whole year in the fight game, and with Christmas just days away, we figured why not pose the question: What would be the perfect Christmas gift for each of boxing’s top stars?
What do you get Floyd Mayweather?
Or Gennady Golovkin?
Let’s find out.
At the risk of piling on and being called a hater, I think Adonis Stevenson looked more like the cowardly lion from The Wizard of Oz in 2014 than the man who took the light heavyweight crown with a one-punch demolition of Chad Dawson the year prior.
Stevenson’s career has been bungled and badly managed from pretty much the moment that big left hand imploded Bad Chad’s jaw.
He left HBO when Showtime threw him some extra cash for his May title defense against Andrzej Fonfara, spurning a widely anticipated unification clash with Sergey Kovalev in the process.
Many fans weren’t happy, but their angst was tempered by the possibility of Stevenson matching wits with ageless wonder and unified light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins.
But Hopkins, in his own words, grew tired of waiting for Stevenson’s camp to get its act together and instead took his show to HBO to face Kovalev.
A fight with former light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal—which would be a huge event in Montreal—also fell apart over money.
Pascal is also on his way to HBO now, taking on Kovalev this coming March and prompting Greg Leon, CEO of Pascal’s promotional company to say, per Rick Reeno of BoxingScene.com:
I’m going to send a letter to The Ring Magazine for Adonis Stevenson to be stripped of that title. He doesn’t deserve it. Pascal fought Hopkins twice, he’s ready to fight Kovalev. Kovalev fought Hopkins and now he’s ready to fight Pascal. Who’s the only guy missing? The Ring Magazine champion? He should be stripped for [being a] coward.
Harsh but not entirely unfair.
And that’s why Stevenson needs a heart this Christmas.
Gennady Golovkin finally cracked ESPN.com’s pound-for-pound rankings—currently sitting in the No. 6 spot—and he scored three more spectacular knockouts in 2014
The Kazakh bomber is one of the elite offensive forces in the sport, but he’s had some trouble in trying to attract quality foes.
Longtime division kingpin Sergio Martinez didn’t seem interested, instead electing to take a much safer—or so he thought—and more lucrative showdown with Puerto Rican icon Miguel Cotto in June.
Cotto is now focused on a potential box-office blockbuster against Mexican sensation Canelo Alvarez, and you can’t fault him for it.
Even Golovokin’s team understands.
GGG’s promoter Tom Loeffler told Michael Woods of The Sweet Science back in September that his man will keep fighting the best available guys—he faces Martin Murray on Feb. 21—and anticipates a shot at the winner of Cotto vs. Canelo.
Canelo’s team, led by promoter Oscar De La Hoya, has expressed an interest in that fight, as has Cotto trainer Freddie Roach, so, hopefully, Santa will leave Golovkin a high-profile opponent under his tree for 2015.
Either Canelo or Cotto would do just fine.
Canelo has one thing on his wish list this year, and he wants it more than anything: Cinco de Mayo.
The Mexican sensation recently came to terms on an exclusive multifight contract with HBO, and with that deal came the expectation of making the cinnamon-haired star the biggest pay-per-view draw in the sport.
That’s a position currently held by pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, who sold the two biggest PPV events of the year and shared the ring with Canelo for the highest-grossing fightin boxing history in September 2013.
Canelo’s loss in the ring hasn’t deterred him from a frontal assault on Mayweather’s PPV preponderance.
He’s insistent on fighting on both Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day weekend—traditional dates held by Mayweather—in order to reclaim them for his nation’s fans.
Canelo has agreed to terms for a bout with Cotto, which still requires the Puerto Rican champion’s signature to become final, and that bout has been targeted for May 2. A Mexico vs. Puerto Rico rivalry match on that date would be box-office gold, and it would be a true shock if it doesn’t get done.
De La Hoya has been open about Canelo’s demand to secure that date but said a Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao showdown on that date would prompt him to ask Alvarez to move his fight.
We’ll believe that when we see it.
So, for now, get your limes and cerveza ready.
Andre Ward is a prodigious talent, but injuries and a prolonged legal battle with his now-deceased promoter have limited him to just two fights in the past three years.
That’s a great way to zap all your momentum and make people forget about you in a hurry.
Ward has only 27 professional fights, but he holds victories over a slew of high-level fighters. He thrashed then-reigning light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson in September 2012, successfully following his dominant victory in Showtime’s Super Six Tournament.
He was the undisputed top dog at his weight—perhaps even the best 168-pound fighter in history—and most considered him second only to Mayweather in the pound-for-pound ranks.
You’ll still find him plenty on HBO these days, but he’s always wearing a suit and talking about fights rather than, you know, lacing up the gloves and doing it himself.
That’s why he needs a pair of boxing gloves this Christmas.
Ward has been involved in extended litigation with his late promoter Dan Goossen and his promotional company, seeking to void his contract. Repeated attempts have all beenunsuccessful, but they’ve kept him out of the ring.
Seems like a terrible waste, no?
Ward could easily find himself in the mix for big fights with the Gennady Golovkins and Sergey Kovalevs of the world, but first he needs to commit to being a fighter and not a commentator.
Timothy Bradley got a rude visit from the karma fairy last weekend in Las Vegas.
His fight with Diego Chaves was competitive, fun to watch and exciting, but there’s no way you could possibly convince anyone with at least one working eye that the Argentine deserved a draw, much less a win.
Julie Lederman, daughter of HBO’s on-air judge Harold Lederman, is generally one of the best judges in the business. She’s never involved in any controversy, but her card on this particular night was atrocious.
Chaves won eight rounds? Where exactly?
Bradley was fortunate that all he got was a draw and not a loss. That result would have fit in perfectly well with the other horrific judging at The Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas on that night.
One of the things heard a lot after the fight was that somehow the judges had evened the score with Bradley, who had received an absolute gift decision against Manny Pacquiao in June 2012.
You can choose to look at it that way if you like. You have that luxury.
As for Bradley?
He’s probably just getting tired of the judges being the story.
Is it too much to ask, just once, for them to give him a decision totally devoid of any controversy?
To steal an iconic line from Swingers: “Vegas baby! Vegas!”
Carl Froch is sprinting toward the end of a highly underrated career, and the 37-year-old unified 168-pound champion has only one thing on his mind.
He wants to fight Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in Las Vegas next year.
So much so, that his trainer believes he’ll retire if a deal can’t be struck.
Froch’s promoter Eddie Hearn has been stateside in recent weeks, meeting with Chavez Jr.’s people in an attempt to iron out the details of a fight between the two men.
But the former middleweight champion is involved in a sticky contract dispute with Top Rank—who claims he owes one more fight on his contract—and recently signed with powerful manager Al Haymon.
Bob Arum, who heads Top Rank, and Haymon have an oil-and-water relationship, and the legal battles currently ongoing could put a monkey wrench in Froch’s plan to live his Vegas dream.
Maybe he needs a Christmas miracle to realize his dream of a big fight in boxing’s most iconic city.
There’s no way to definitively know how many times some variation of the following statement has appeared in the comments section of one my articles: “Why don’t you guys ever talk about Roman Gonzalez?”
You’re absolutely right, so here goes.
Gonzalez might just be the most talented pound-for-pound fighter in the world.
Better?
Chocolatito is undefeated in 41 bouts and has a near-absurd 35 stoppages even while spending his entire career between 105 and 116 pounds.
That’s part of his problem, at least when it comes to attracting the sort of mainstream attention that creates superstars. American fight fans generally don’t pay attention to the little guys, but if you blow off Gonzalez, you’re missing the boat.
He’s rugged and exciting and just loves to get in there and mix it up. His four knockout victories this year should earn him some consideration for Fighter of the Year honors, even when many fight fans haven’t seen or heard much from him.
Don’t believe me? Check out the mud hole he stomped in Akira Yaegashi to win the WBC Flyweight Championship earlier this year.
Now if we can just get a few more eyes on him, he’ll be set.
Juan Manuel Marquez has made no secret of his desire to capture a share of the welterweight championship before he hangs up the gloves.
Winning an eighth world championship is certainly a noble goal for the 41-year-old future Hall of Famer, but this one would carry a bit more significance than your standard shiny new belt for the trophy case.
Marquez joined Jorge Arce and Erik Morales as four-division world champions from Mexico when he won a junior welterweight championship in 2012.
By winning a title at welterweight, he would become the first Mexican fighter in history to capture a belt in five weight classes.
That’s pretty significant, given the rich fighting tradition and history of Mexican boxing.
The big question for Marquez is how does he get there?
He’s expressed less-than-zero interest in fighting longtime rival Pacquiao for a fifth time, seemingly eliminating the WBO title from consideration.
Which is a shame.
Could you imagine the hype surrounding Pacquiao vs. Marquez V and all the storylines that would surround the bout?
Mayweather holds the WBC and WBA straps, but there’s absolutely no market for a rematch between him and Marquez.
Kell Brook might well be the most plausible option.
The Brit captured his belt with an upset decision over Shawn Porter this summer. He could be in the market for a high-profile fight, should a desired all-Brit showdown with Amir Khan fail to materialize.
Pacquiao wants Money.
Not the kind you find floating to the floor after opening a holiday card from your aunt who lives in Tulsa—the man who goes by that moniker.
Pacquiao has become increasingly vocal in recent months about his desire to step into the ring with Mayweather and answer one of boxing’s greatest questions.
His reasons are obviously two-fold.
A bout with Mayweather is clearly the fight the fans want most—they have for at least the past five years—and Pacquiao genuinely seems interested in doing his part to make sure it happens.
There’s also the financial angle.
Both Pacquiao and Mayweather’s PPV numbers have taken a hit in 2014.
But while Mayweather remains the sport’s top box-office draw—by a wide margin—Pacquiao’s latest contest, a ludicrously one-sided decision over Chris Algieri, is rumored to have been a colossal flop, according to GlaserBoxing.com’s Rick Glaser (h/t Bad Left Hook).
Both parts play into the equation for Pacquiao and his team at Top Rank, and if you don’t see that, you’re wearing rose-colored glasses.
That said, as fans, do you really care why Pacquiao wants the fight?
Or just that he does?
Relax, Mayweather fans—nobody is saying that your guy is done or that he isn’t still the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport or its top attraction.
He’s just had a bad year.
It happens.
Mayweather has had a couple of struggles inside the ring against an opponent he was expected to handle easily, clashed with key members of his inner circle and faces increasing public pressure to finally step through the ropes with longtime rival Pacquiao.
He’s spent a lot of 2014 responding to the message rather than driving it, and that’s very unlike him.
Nobody in the business is better at driving the people, events and circumstances around him than Floyd, and it’s this high standard that makes the last 12 months so baffling.
It’s time to just hit the reset button and come back in the new year with a new message and a new focus.
Perfect Christmas Presents for Boxing’s Top Stars
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