There’s probably no better way to get over a wretched several months of big-time boxing (we’ll complain more later, but with one exception you have to go all the way back to July to find a main event on a major card that wasn’t unsatisfying) than to look ahead. It’s a mouthwash solution, though, that will only cover up the stink. It isn’t a good toothbrushing.
Besides the people in the headline, in this edition of Round and Round we’ll look at fights under discussion for Antonio DeMarco, Dmitry Pirog, Amir Khan and others.
Round And Round
It was just some crazy rumor that Floyd Mayweather was in talks with middleweight champion Sergio Martinez for a fight, according to Martinez’ team. It would have to be — Mayweather taking on Martinez (even coming off a lackluster Martinez showing) would be the bravest move of Mayweather’s career in nearly a decade, if not more. But Devon Alexander, after apparently flirting with signing on with Mayweather’s promotional company, is talking about wanting to fight Mayweather. And after all those friendly calls from Floyd to Devon about how great he was. Just kidding, not a problem — Devon should want to fight the best, so that’s a good thing, and he’s ranked #1 at welterweight for no good reason by the WBC where Floyd holds the belt. And in yet more unlikely Mayweather opponent news, junior welterweight Marcos Maidana has said he’d like a piece of Floyd. On the scale of willing Mayweather opponents, the list still reads Manny Pacquiao, Martinez, Khan… with Maidana a distantly desirable fight and Alexander nowhere near interesting until Alexander looks better than he has in recent fights.
Golden Boy Promotions wants to do a rematch double-header in early 2012 that involves Maidana, and it would be a doozy. They want Maidana-Erik Morales in a junior welterweight do-over of their Fight of the Year-caliber bout earlier this year, and a lightweight do-over of the recent excellent DeMarco-Jorge Linares clash. Both Maidana and Morales have said they’re willing, although they’ve also both said that before only for it not to come to fruition. DeMarco’s promoter Gary Shaw has been remarkably silent on what he wants to do with DeMarco next, and part of me suspects that they wouldn’t be enthused about a rematch based on how the early part of that fight went. Hope I’m wrong.
Showtime has some money to spend before 2011 ends, reportedly, so they’ve set aside a Dec. 31 date and numerous promoters are pitching their wares. One could be a double bill with light heavyweights Beibut Shumenov and Zsolt Erdei and junior featherweights Rico Ramos and Guillermo Rigondeaux. Another could feature Erdei in against Tavoris Cloud instead, with Cornelius Bundrage and Deandre Latimore duking it out at junior middleweight on the undercard. Yet another could feature middleweight Pirog against Daniel Geale (David Lemieux was also offered the Pirog fight, but it was turned down, and Lemieux and his acclaimed trainer Russ Anber, by the way, have split over his training habits, a disturbing condition for the knockout artist coming off his first loss); the undercard could feature junior middleweight Serhiy Dzinziruk against someone. Of the three cards, absent info on who Dzinziruk would be fighting, the best two-fight card is Rigondeaux-Ramos and Shumenov-Erdei (which would strangely be “a fight to end Goossen-Tutor’s lawsuit against Shumenov,” as good a title to fight for as any I’ve ever heard of). But Pirog-Geale is by far the best main event, so if Dzinziruk can be scrounged up a good opponent, that’s my vote.
