In a boxing week full of interesting goings on, here’s my take on some of the stories that caught my eye:
– Multiple media sources are reporting that Devin Haney has signed on to fight George Kambosos in a four-belt lightweight title unification and, in doing so, has inked a co-promotional deal with Top Rank Promotions and DiBella Entertainment (Kambosos’ promoter). The bout, being staged in Kambosos’ native Australia, will be telecast June 4 in the US on ESPN.
One tidbit of info that leaked to the public during the contentious negotiations between Team Kambosos, Team Haney, and DAZN is the fact that DAZN, which has broadcast Haney’s last six bouts, didn’t have an exclusive contract when it came to broadcasting Haney’s fights. It seems exceedingly odd that a broadcaster would put so much money into a young fighter (upwards of $1 million per fight) and NOT have any real proprietary control when it comes to where he fights. It’s odd, but not surprising coming from the brain trust over at the wannabe Netflix of sports.
In this mess, we also learned that Haney’s deal with Matchroom Boxing had apparently expired, leaving Haney and Matchroom’s Eddie Hearn with a gentleman’s agreement only.
So, yeah, DAZN fed millions into trying to make Haney a star, only to watch him get up and leave when he finally got his big fight. And to make matters worse, it appears that it was their own stubbornness in making an agreeable broadcast deal for the Kambosos fight that actually led to Haney signing a co-promotional deal to fight elsewhere. Derp!
– Terrell Gausha is gonna kick himself when he goes back and watches a replay of his unanimous decision loss to Tim Tszyu this past Saturday. This was a fight he could’ve (and probably should’ve) won. However, not too long after dropping the second generation star in the first round, he settled into his usual won’t-let-his-hands-go-anywhere-near-enough funk and simply let the fight slip away. On the rare occasions after rounds one or two, when he did throw a meaningful punch, he was able to touch Tszyu solidly. Unfortunately for him, those rare occasions were exceedingly rare and he mostly just kept his hands up and let Tszyu do his thing. If Gausha had been willing to open up a bit more, we may be talking about his late career awakening and his spot near the front of the line for a world title shot. Instead, we got a somewhat tepid US debut from Tszyu, who took what was given to him by a fairly passive foe, but who clearly has some work to do before taking on the elite of the junior middleweight division.
– Promoter Eddie Hearn appeared to throw in the towel on Demetrius Andrade late last week, saying that the fighter’s upcoming WBO super middleweight interim title fight against Zach Parker is likely to be his last with Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing.
“I expect this to be his last fight with Matchroom, to be honest with you,” Hearn recently told Pro Boxing Fans. “I think that we’ve sort of worked the best we could for Demetrius Andrade without delivering him the big fights that he needed.
“We tried everything. It’s not his fault, and I don’t think it’s our fault either. I think after this fight he should look at the option out there available to him. We’ve got options for him, we’ll present them. We’ve been working real well together but without any real benefit with each other…He hasn’t been in the fights that have been delivering for us; we haven’t been delivering the big fights to him.”
Hearn’s self-absolution is on the money in the sense that Team Andrade has been failing in the Demetrius Andrade business long before Matchroom came along. Although, for Andrade, as a fighter who kills his own buzz better than most anyone in recent memory, stumbling into a big money deal with DAZN has to be seen as a huge life win.
This whole Andrade experience, though, also kind of reveals the hypocrisy in Hearn’s constant calling out of non-DAZN fighters and making it appear as though they’re ducking his guys. When push came to shove, he couldn’t even make big in-house fights for Andrade and was unable to wrangle bouts against fellow DAZN guys like Gennadiy Golovkin, Jaime Munguia, or even Daniel Jacobs (who was a Matchroom Boxing stablemate of Andrade’s for about two years).
So, what’s next for Demetrius Andrade? Who knows? Let’s see if he can find a way to make us care.
– According to ex-ESPN guy Dan Rafael, who’s currently trying to peddle his re-hashed and re-reconfigured press releases into (lol) a subscription-only newsletter (lol), “representatives for Jamie Munguia and Daniel Jacobs have begun discussing a fight between them that would headline a DAZN card this summer.”
This is actually a quality piece of damage control matchmaking from both sides. Munguia gets to save face by pursuing a “name” fighter after walking away from two world title shots (against Demetrius Andrade and Jermall Charlo), an interim title shot (against Janibek Alimkhanuly) and an eliminator (against Carlos Adame) in, like, a year’s time. Jacobs, meanwhile, gets a chance to rebound against a “name” after his recent loss to John Ryder and a string of unimpressive performances that have made him look old and/or disinterested.
Don’t hold your breath on the this one, though. As much sense as it makes for both sides, boxing is boxing.
– Talent is flocking to the lightweight division in hopes of landing a big money bout with one of the division’s top stars. Unfortunately for Miguel Berchelt, he won’t be in the mix for any of those big fights. Namibia’s Jeremia Nakathila walked through Mexico’s former super featherweight world champ Saturday night en route to a sixth round stoppage. The 30-year-old Berchelt, who was dropped in the third round with a jab, looked tired, undersized, and just generally done in what was to be the first fight in a lightweight campaign. He was just never in the fight and never presented much of a challenge to Nakathila. After a brave last stand in the fifth, Berchelt was battered mercilessly in the sixth, forcing a referee stoppage between rounds. After this beating and the beating at the hands of Oscar Valdez in his last fight, it’s hard to imagine Berchelt coming back to anything resembling world class level. Hopefully, a permanent retirement is in his immediate future and he’ll resist the temptation of becoming a “name” sacrificial lamb on the resume of some hotshot young prospect.
As for Nakathila? This kind of dominant performance, even against a spent bullet, has to move him up the ladder of contention. Previously known as the unflappable guy who lost every round to super featherweight Shakur Stevenson last year, he’s now the guy who retired Miguel Berchelt and that should buy him some more shots to work his way towards the top of the lightweight food chain.
Got something for Magno? Send it here: paulmagno@theboxingtribune.com