Who in the Hell is Rod Salka?
The announcement of Danny Garcia’s next opponent sent shockwaves through the boxing community for all the wrong reasons. No disrespect but Rod Salka? Rod Salka? A 135lber moving up to 140 is Garcia’s last fight at light welter weight? Come on man! I personally thought Danny was more of the hard working, earn my way to the top, kind of fighters but now it seems as if he just wants to coast to stay on top. Garcia lost a lot of fans with this selection and seems to be following the taxi-cab driver route to paydays. Herrera was a step down from Matthysse and Salka is a jump off the cliff from Herrera. Salka did nothing to earn a fight with the lineal champ at 140 and we did nothing wrong to deserve such a rubbish fight.
So about that “best fights for the fans” thing Oscar?
To compound a crappy fight for Garcia, Oscar and good old Al Haymon decided to bless us with Lamont Peterson vs Edgar Santana and the best fight of the whole card which would be Danny Jacobs vs. Jarod Fletcher. This fight card is a total sham and money grab like the old Andre Berto cards from back in the day on HBO. If this is Oscar’s idea of the best fights, he needs to get Schaefer back quick to rectify the situation. First it was Guerrero fighting subpar competition and now Garcia. I hope this is not a sign of things to come.
Crawford beats Gamboa
Terrance Crawford earned a lot of praise for his sensational KO of Yuriorkis Gamboa on Saturday night. He did look very good and this was the first fight that he was truly entertaining. I see his entertainment value coming from 2 things. 1. He was way bigger than Gamboa and he even said after the fight that Gamboa was a featherweight and too small for him. And 2. Gamboa made the fight. He came after Crawford all night and was hitting him at will until he got caught in the 5th round. I definitely liked what I saw out of Crawford but I am going to take it for what it was. A good big man beating a good little man. The skills were basically equally but the size and power was the difference. If Crawford can fight like that against opponents at 140 then he will truly have arrived.
Omaha was Rockin!
One of the best things to come out of the awesome fight with Gamboa and Crawford was the terrific atmosphere provided in Omaha. The people came out in droves to support the local kid and were loud all night whether they were booing the co-main event or cheering the main attraction. If boxing can get more crowds like that in cities across the USA (or elsewhere) then it can really put its stamp on the sporting world once again.
Golden Boy’s Break up Primed to get Ugly
Well it looks like the divorce of Oscar and Richard is bound to get ugly. Oscar is suing Richard for $50M and it probably won’t stop there. All this most likely means that we won’t see how this Golden Boy break up ends for a little while longer. Stay tuned!
Amir Khan. Just shut up!
Khan has called everybody in the Northern Hemisphere out as of late it seems. He says if Brook beats Porter he can fight him. Pacman is fighting in November-December and he should fight him. Mayweather should move his date back so he can fight him. Keep in mind this is the same guy who was KOed 4 fights ago by Danny Garcia and has fought 3 consecutive journeymen after that. His drawing power can’t be as great as he thinks if he fought on a Mayweather undercard that didn’t bring in 1M PPV buys (allegedly). Mayweather did roughly 1M buys with The Ghost when he returned from his vacation in a gated community. Khan gets props for fighting tough competition but he still has not learned when to shut up and for someone with a suspect chin he might be better served to keep it down!
Porter vs Brook looks to be on
After speculation and accusations from Porters camp that it wasn’t done, it looks like the fight between the 2 is a go. Eddie Hearn co-signs and so does the Golden Boy VP Eric Gomez. I am looking forward to this fight because I believe both guys have something to prove. I am not sold on Porter just because he beat Paulie Malignaggi and Devon Alexander and I am not sold on Brook because he has not fought a high level of competition at all. I will say that the fact that we have not heard anything from Brook may be a good sign that he is hard at work training to let his fighting do the talking. One way or another we will all find out sometime in September. I got a feeling this fight may be moved to the Mayweather undercard if Floyd fights on the September 15th date. He will definitely need a solid undercard if he wants to sell a lot of PPV’s.
“I only work for Al Haymon”
I keep hearing fighters like Lara and Porter say that they only fight for Haymon but that cannot be true. Common sense says that someone has to promote the fights and someone has to come up with the money to pay the fighters. Haymon may advise and manage them but he is not the one that is paying them and they might wanna think about not burning any bridges in this business because you never know when you need a promoter. As powerful as Haymon is he still needs a promoter to promote the fights and he knows that. His fighters might want to understand that as well.
Stop Buying These Crappy Fights Please!
Speaking of who is paying fighters. How does anyone pay for Rod Salka versus Danny Garcia and the rest of that garbage card? I am not a business major but that is most certainly a bad investment. The same kind of people pay for Wladamir Klitchko to fight the heavyweight bum of the month over and over again and mask him as the mandatory. People are always saying that if we want to make a difference don’t watch the fights but I say how about these networks like Showtime and HBO just stop buying these horrible fights and make the whole process easier. Everyone should have learned from the Andre Berto fights but the same thing happened with Adrien Broner and now Danny Garcia & Robert Guererro. How anyone pays Broner and Guerrero $1M to fight Molina and Kamegai respectively is beyond me. HBO is getting better about the quality of fights they show but now Showtime is just off the rails with allowing some of these fight cards. All it shows is that Showtime is desperate to become the main boxing network but when there content is not better than Fox Sports 1 they just do themselves a disservice.
That’s all we got for this week but that is by far not all there was to talk about. Make sure that you catch the Boxing Voice weekly radio show live every Thursday and Sunday starting at 7pm (East Coast time) or catch the podcast to get more insight and opinions on boxing.
