November has been a month full of fantastic action, including the best fight of the year. Pacquiao’s performance has catapulted him up the ladder and made major splashes in the world of Boxing. Meanwhile, we have the first new heavyweight champion in an amount of time that was far past the tolerance of most Boxing fans. Before navigating the future of Boxing stocks, consider the following report.
RSR presents your Boxing Stock Update.
Five Star Stocks
Manny Pacquiao (up)
Pacman is the first and most obvious on the docket. Pacquiao’s final round knockout over Miguel Cotto put him in a league of his own. A seventh weight class championship is the equivalent of a seventh decade of impressive earnings. Pacquiao didn’t just win another belt when he beat Cotto. Aside from a few rough moments early in the fight, he destroyed, with extreme prejudice, one of the best Pound for Pound fighters on the planet. In the same swoop, Pacquiao likely proved to the world that he is as marketable as Floyd Mayweather, JR. If the results of the Pay Per View are comparable to those of the Mayweather-Juan Manuel Marquez bout last month, Pacquiao will have proven that he is equal in almost all categories.
Right now, the great Filipino monster is exactly one fight from having nothing left to prove. I don’t think I have to tell you what that bout would be.
Floyd Mayweather, JR. (down)
For a guy that just won a fight with the number two Pound for Pound boxer in the world, Mayweather has had an extremely rough run lately. The critics have come out after the Marquez victory and called the win both inevitable and unimpressive. Mayweather also recently lost a rhetorical faceoff with a New York-based emcee named the Rugged Man on a radio show. That interview has made plenty of rounds in the Boxing community because Mayweather was unable to answer any of the charges made against him. That inability may portray Mayweather’s business sense more than it portrays his actual Boxing ability, but one of Mayweather’s great fallback claims is his potential to make dollars and sense.
Freddie Roach called Mayweather out after the fight and put him on the spot, leading Boxing fans everywhere to beckon for the fight. Mayweather has recently responded, “I have yet to hear him actually say, ‘yes I want to fight Mayweather.’ We are the fighters and if one fighter is talking about fighting another fighter, then they should just come out and say it. Manny Pacquiao doesn’t say anything directly about fighting me because he might just know it’s not a fight he can win.”
This could be a ploy by Mayweather to win the battle of posturing in the days leading up to a Pacquiao-Mayweather showdown. There is no doubt that this is the fight that Boxing fans the world over want to see. However, if Mayweather is serious, he should feel ashamed of himself. Pacquiao’s response to the question about who he would like to fight is the exact same as Mayweather’s standard talking point that “Al Haymon and Leonard Ellerbe make his management decisions.” He calls out NO ONE. He can make any fight he wants, so why would he not fight the best guy in his weight range? Pacquiao is the other option for best fighter of the last ten years. If Mayweather ducks him, he will go from 5-Star-Stock to Laughing-Stock.
Chad Dawson (up)
Dawson has proven that he is one of the two best light heavyweights in the world. The only other option for such a spot is the man called Nard. Hopkins-Dawson is the natural light heavyweight fight. Whether or not we such a bout depends on the business side of the fight game. Hopkins is hardly afraid to face anyone, but he drives a hard bargain when it comes to economic considerations. While this can be annoying at times, it’s hard to blame a quarto-genarian prize fighter. Forty years old in Boxing is like eighty years old in life. You have to make the most of your time.
Anyway, this report is about Dawson, not Hopkins, and Dawson’s second win over Glen Johnson was much more lopsided than his first. With this victory, Dawson’s resume has begun to shine in ways similar to that of Paul Williams. He has quietly stacked victories over Antonio Tarver (twice), Johnson (twice), and Tomasz Adamek. There are very few active champs with seven fight title reigns that include that many quality victories.
4 Star Stocks
Yuri Foreman (up)
Welcome to the big show, Mr. Foreman. The prospective rabbi boxed the ears off of the once-mighty Puerto Rican Daniel Santos. Santos looked out of shape and wheezy, but that does not detract from the HBO debut of the impressive Foreman, who easily shake-and-baked en route to an easy victory. Frankly, Santos is lucky that he wasn’t knocked out. Many will point to the poor shape of Foreman’s opponent in detracting from his performance, but the fact that he was able to put Santos in trouble and almost take him out (twice) should at least partially answer some of the questions about whether or not Foreman has the pop to survive in the rough-and-tumble world of championship Boxing.
Kelly Pavlik (down)
Pavlik pulled out of a fight with Paul Williams because of a staph infection, then rescheduled against Manuel Espino for fight only two weeks later. The pundits have murdered him for it…and he deserves it. Espino once lost a fight against Peter Manfredo, a man who should be credited for his courage to fight hard and often but not for his Hall of Fame skill. To be clear: Pavlik is picking up trash left by Peter Manfredo. If that isn’t a step down from a title reign that included two victories over Jermain Taylor and one over Edison Miranda, I don’t know what is.
Pavlik’s stock is cheap enough to buy if you have some extra cash that you won’t miss, but don’t spend any dough on a company with such a poor track record and balance sheet.
Nikolay Valuev (down)
Seven feet, an average jab, and a huge head do not a good boxer make. We have to come to terms, as a Boxing community, with the fact that Valuev just isn’t that good. His promotion team knows that he is a hell of a spectacle, so they are willing to stick him in there with a slew of fighters, but he’s only a good viewing once, as a novelty. Expect his stock to continually fall from here. He may be worth short trades if he has a tune-up here or there, but don’t expect him to peak higher than he was when he was 46-0.
David Haye (up)
Haye is on the brink of joining the upper echelon stocks. After becoming the undisputed champion at cruiserweight, Haye has now picked up a heavyweight belt in his most boring yet most impressive victory since hitting the highest weight class in Boxing. Haye’s victory over the giant Valuev saved Boxing fans the pain of watching yet another painful title defense by the snooze-worthy, NBA-sized Russian. Haye makes for interesting fights, and he will hopefully face a Klitschko, but his next fight will come against John Ruiz. Expect Ruiz to make the bout ugly, but also expect Haye to find a way to beat him. Should he knock out “The Quiet Man”, we will see his worth shoot through the roof. However, if Ruiz gropes the whole time, expect a boring win that leads to choppy returns for the run length of his title run. Should Ruiz win, Haye’s stock will tumble.
Bear to Watch
Ricky Hatton
Hatton might be the most undervalued stock on the planet due to his knockout loss to Manny Pacquiao. Maybe he was never meant to be an A-Plus fighter, but Hatton can still scrap and is thinking about making a comeback. Should he decide to do so, a fight against someone like Juan Diaz or Juan Manuel Marquez is not out of the question. Both of those fights are ones Ricky can win, so it wouldn’t hurt to buy a few shares of Hatton while the stock is depressed.
