Rolling the dice
The new boxing trend for 2022: Bet on yourself and (try to) beat the system
Welcome to Double Dutch Boxing, a boxing newsletter from Jake Lawton. If you’re here for the first time, you can subscribe below to receive every edition direct to your inbox, and you can also get in touch by replying to this email. Thanks for reading.
Before we begin, can we all marvel at the greatness of Oleksandr Usyk celebrating his birthday earlier this month?
Not only the unified heavyweight champ but also the lord of the dance. Happy Birthday sir.
We now return to your regularly scheduled programming…
Inverting the pyramid
THE LONG READ
It’s Canelo’s world now, we just live in it. The undoubted fighter of the year for 2021 has almost single-handedly kept legitimate boxing relevant to the American mainstream audience over the last 12 months and further cemented his stardom across the world.
Sure, the Jake Paul circus has garnered a huge amount of coverage and spawned some apparently wildly diverse pay-per-view numbers - some claimed to be huge, others reported to be pretty disappointing - and his brother Logan and Floyd Mayweather’s “legalised bank robbery” exhibition was unfortunately one of the biggest events of the boxing year (even if Paul claims to have not yet been paid for his efforts).
When it comes to genuine elite-level boxing, however, Canelo’s numbers demonstrate that he is head and shoulders above anyone else in the modern game. Saul now has the ability to essentially do whatever he fancies in 2022 and beyond…and so much of it has only become possible due to the fact that he has taken control of his own destiny. After his messy parting of the ways with Golden Boy in November 2020, he has become a freelance fighter, working with whoever provides him with the opportunities he wants to take.
It now looks like Alvarez’s strategy has created the template for a bit of a quiet revolution in boxing too.
He’s become a trendsetter for established fighters, frustrated by various aspects of the boxing business, to work outside of the traditional promoter-ruled system to attempt to achieve the fights and titles not always easily accessible in the sport’s political minefield.
Alvarez wasn’t exactly doing badly under the Golden Boy banner whatsover, but he just would not have been able to do what he has done since December 2020 - when he routed Callum Smith to win the WBA and WBC super middleweight titles - if he had stayed tied to Oscar De La Hoya’s outfit. This and his next two fights, including stopping Billy Joe Saunders in May to claim the WBO 168 pound strap, were fought under the Matchroom banner officially, but really Canelo Promotions has been calling the shots.
The fact that he was then able to defeat Caleb Plant to become the undisputed super middleweight champion on a huge-selling PBC/Showtime pay-per-view in November and get paid an estimated $40 million for the privilege just a year after going independent has ripped up the rulebook for what is achievable in the modern boxing game. He might have a preferred co-promoter in the future, he might not - everything is on the table now for Saul.
It’s easy to forget that public sentiment towards Alvarez was not universally positive after the supremely engaging and controversial duology with Gennady Golovkin. I maintain their first fight being called a draw, rather than a GGG win, was a poor call and Adelaide Byrd’s 118-110 Canelo card remains one of the worst in recent memory from a sport full of examples of terrible scoring. His skills have never been in doubt, but Alvarez was openly booed by the live crowd when that result was announced.
Canelo’s ability to control his own narrative since November 2020 has proved vital in allowing him to turn this attitude around though, and he is now a history-making Mexican hero who is pretty much universally accepted as the top pound-for-pound competitor in the sport.
The landscape he and his trainer, manager and closest confidant Eddy Reynoso have created is seeing any number of boxers from across the heavier weights chucking their names into the mix for a chance to win the Canelo lottery. He is the first name on the lips of everyone from Jermall Charlo to David Benavidez and Artur Beterbiev to Joe Smith Jr.
On the promotional and broadcasting side, there is not a major one who wouldn’t peddle a bike themselves (or pay an underling overtime to carry them) to Guadalajara to offer Saul untold amounts for a fight with their best and brightest. His previous legal dispute with DAZN was quickly forgotten and he was welcomed back with open arms to the streamer because he is quite simply just that valuable.
This is not only because he is the biggest money-drawer in the sport, but also because his free agent status means that a fight with anyone, no matter their promotional affiliation, is entirely possible.
The traditional route sees a boxer sign up with a promoter towards the beginning of their career and then proceed to fight on a specific broadcaster against other boxers who also compete under the same banner. Through a combination of a manager, whose job is to look after that fighters’ interests specifically, and a promoter, who puts on the events and signs the TV platform deals, a boxer theoretically has a safety net of a team overseeing their career.
On occasion, for world title fights, a boxer might be permitted to cross to the other side of the road and fight somewhere else either by a deal being agreed or the bout going to purse bids, but there are still all sorts of influential parties to take into account and often the best and most valuable fights slip through a fighter’s fingers in front of their eyes.
I always think of Peter Quillin as an example of how the agenda and direction of higher-ups can impact a career. As the reigning WBO middleweight champion, the purse bid for Quillin’s 2014 mandatory defence against Matt Korobov was won by the then-upstart promoter Roc Nation Sports (headed up by Jay-Z), who planned to set the fight as the headliner of their first ever boxing event. Quillin himself was set to bank $1.4 million, by far his highest fight purse up to this point.
Rather than go through with the defence, however, Quillin gave up both his world title belt and the huge payday after discussion with his manager Al Haymon, a wildly influential figure in the sport who isn’t ‘officially’ a promoter as well but through a number of affiliates essentially runs the PBC show. Haymon also just happens to have a long-running feud with Jay-Z and Beyonce from his days in the music industry, and pulling Quillin from their first card certainly wasn’t going to help Roc Nation.
Quillin claiming he was walking away “in order to make the fights the fans and I want against my fellow middleweights at the top of the division” didn’t wash with many, as most of those weren’t ever going to happen due to boxing politics and seemed less likely without a world title in play. Quillin went on to draw with Andy Lee and lose in a round to Daniel Jacobs across the following years. ‘Kid Chocolate’ has probably made decent money out of his career I guess, but he hasn’t come close to recapturing a world title since he handed over his WBO belt. He was last seen being upset by Alfredo Angulo in 2019.
I can’t see how he could possibly regard walking away from the title and the Korobov fight as a good idea in hindsight, and it surely isn’t something he would have done if he had his time again.
Promoters will always have value for fighters, especially in their early days, and certainly aren’t going anywhere. To a prospect, having a regular spot on undercards of events with the big outfits can offer invaluable experience, and when done best promoters can guide unknown fighters towards stardom. They can be matched against a variety of opponents bringing different problems to solve, in a relatively controlled and unpressured environment.
For a live example, I’ve been really impressed with the job Top Rank has done with young heavyweight Jared Anderson so far, and expect them to do similar with their new Olympic recruits Keyshawn Davis and Richard Torrez Jr. as they move forward in their professional journeys.
Once a boxer reaches world level, however, being a free agent clearly offers up huge potential rewards, even it is also a riskier option.
So who else is joining Comrade Canelo on the frontline of the boxing social justice movement?
Terence Crawford couldn’t have announced his departure from Top Rank in a more high-profile or brutal manner. With Bob Arum sitting right next to him, the long-time welterweight kingpin did not hold back at the post-fight press conference for his win over Shawn Porter in late November when he proclaimed he was no longer under contract…
“I’m pretty sure my decision is made already. Bob couldn’t secure me the Spence fight when I was with him, so how is he gonna secure me the Spence fight when I’m not with him?... You all know who I want. I've been calling him out. Maybe I'll go up to 154lbs. Maybe Spence will fight me.”
Although he has stressed he doesn’t need the Errol Spence Jr. bout to cement his already-glittering career, frustrations around fights with almost all of his top welterweight competitors not surfacing has clearly driven his decision. Bob, for his part, has said that he lost money on every Crawford fight he has promoted. I’m not in a position to comment on the merits or otherwise of the racial bias lawsuit Crawford has since brought against Arum and his company, but I will say that a fight with Spence is more likely to happen now than it was before November. Regardless of if he has to sign some sort of deal with PBC to deliver it or not, I can’t see Crawford going all-in with a major promoter again in his career.
Whether it actually does or not - this is boxing, after all - Crawford is now in a position to control his own destiny in a way he just was not before, fighting at welterweight or if he moves up.
Boxing fans were somewhat befuddled when it was announced that IBF flyweight champion Sunny Edwards’ first title defence was confirmed to take place on new outfit Probellum’s debut show in Dubai in December, given that Edwards has been a long-standing Frank Warren fighter.
After defeating mandatory challenger Jayson Mama, Edwards made it clear that his aim was a unification fight with WBC titleholder Julio Cesar Martinez - who works under Eddie Hearn and the DAZN umbrella. To have the best chance of securing this and other bouts he sees as pivotal to his career, Sunny confirmed earlier this month that he has parted ways with Frank and Queensbury Promotions, and isn’t planning to directly replace him any time soon…
“I am in a position right now where my main focus is search and destroying and going up, down, left, right, roundabout, wherever the big exciting fights are. I feel like, at this stage of my career, maybe not being tied down to a promoter will definitely help that…Once I won the title, it was a case of ‘where are the big fights out there?’ - and in this weight and the next, there isn’t really anyone Frank would have in-house to put all my eggs in that basket.”
If we take into account the fact that unified champions such as Oleksandr Usyk (heavyweight) and George Kambosos Jr. (lightweight) are also not attached to the ‘acknowledged’ big players like Matchroom, Top Rank and PBC, we see that there is now a situation in which a handful of promoters’ ability to call all the shots at the top of the game is slipping.
There is no doubt that a protectionist attitude has hurt the sport, and meant that fewer of the fights we really want to see are made. PBC especially have been almost entirely reticent to allow their fighters to compete outside of their own ecosystem, barring occasional world title fights. If an increasing number of fighters expect more freedom, however, they will have to either allow them to cross the road to non-PBC events or spend the big bucks - as they did with Canelo vs Plant - to secure major events for their contracted talent.
Established boxers taking their promotion into their own hands is, of course, nothing new in the fight game. A number of legends have created promotional companies in their own image since the Muhammad Ali Act came into effect in 2000, the US law which was introduced with the aim of halting the abuse of boxers by promoters and the wider boxing system.
Floyd Mayweather famously spent $750,000 to buy himself out of his relationship with Top Rank and HBO and created Mayweather Promotions in 2007, later becoming the most banked fighter in boxing history. Oscar De La Hoya had previously used his superstardom to help establish Golden Boy Promotions as a major player in the business.
What is happening now does feel somewhat different, however, and not purely because most fighters these days don’t have the stardust of Floyd and Oscar. The class of 2022 are considering going it alone not just with the ambition of making money, but also so they can more easily secure those legacy fights in a sport where contracts and politics often make that nigh-on impossible.
Sunny Edwards, for example, is objectively not a huge name outside of the hardcore fanbase and is probably unlikely to launch Edwards Promotions to rival Matchroom, PBC and Top Rank for decades to come, but he knows that he doesn’t want to be tied down to a single boxing cul de sac if the fights aren’t there for him. He isn’t expecting to become the promoter himself, but he is hoping to make the most of the time he has left in the sport.
Crawford and Edwards are of course still both affiliated with management company MTK Global. Edwards is a very vocal supporter of their hugely controversial, to put it lightly, boss Daniel Kinahan, and Probellum itself is a promotion that has obvious links to Kinahan and MTK. Floyd Mayweather had Al Haymon in his corner when he set off on his billion-dollar journey of self-promotion and has spoken in the past about just how important their relationship was, noting he was like a second father to him.
No boxer can truly work successfully at the top level without a support group of some kind, given the size and complexity of the business behind the scenes, but there is a lot to be said for being malleable when it comes to controlling your promotional affiliations.
Let’s also remember that promoters don’t always have the fighter’s best interests at the top of their priority list. These are companies first and foremost, who want to make as much money as possible. We have seen some horrendous examples of exploitation of fighters in boxing’s history, and there is little protection in place for them once their careers come to an end, so any power which can be given to the true stars of this crazy sport has to be a good thing.
Boxing is a dangerous sport, and there is only a finite amount of time to make your mark at your peak, so cutting ties with at least some of the baggage if you have the opportunity to do so can be both a brave and intelligent move.
If their calculated risks prove successful, perhaps more prominent fighters will choose to follow Canelo’s lead. Viva la revolución.
The heavyweight agenda
Thoughts on the glamour division’s chaotic boxing newswire…
There is a chance things are clearing up a bit in the heavyweight division, but then again there is every likelihood it’s all getting even messier. It had appeared as if we might be inching towards an announcement for Tyson Fury vs Dillian Whyte for the WBC heavyweight crown in the not-too-distant future. At the request of both sides, the purse bid hearing was pushed back to this coming Wednesday, allowing more time for negotiations before it would go to auction. Then, late Sunday night, reports emerged that Anthony Joshua was considering accepting a £15 million ($20 million) deal in exchange for stepping aside to allow an undisputed title fight between Fury and WBA/WBO/IBF champ Oleksandr Usyk to take place, with Joshua facing the winner. Joshua has quickly and strongly rubbished those reports in the last 24 hours.
If AJ did come to a deal, where this would leave the Fury-Whyte negotiations it’s very difficult to say. Eddie Hearn represents both AJ and Dillian, so presumably wouldn’t be considering the situation for one and not the other, so perhaps Whyte will be offered a (lesser but still massive) bank transfer to step aside as well. So really, there are far more questions than answers currently.
Given that Whyte has been the WBC mandatory forever, and that they went against their own rulebook by placing an 80/20 split for purse bids for his proposed crack at Fury’s heavyweight title, there is really nothing to indicate they wouldn’t be prepared to ditch Dillian for the sake of allowing their champion Fury a crack at becoming undisputed. The WBC did allow some wriggle room previously for the winner of Fury-Deontay Wilder III to negotiate a four-belt fight, although the time on that has since elapsed. If he wasn’t happy with his deal, Whyte might even then decide to bring yet more legal proceedings against the WBC, for whatever that would be worth.
Given that he is a true road warrior, I can’t imagine Usyk being difficult to negotiate with if the Fury fight does get the go-ahead. Tyson, on the other hand, continues to spend his time on social media offering up a boxing match with UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou.
So again, pretty much clear as mud with vested interests all over the place, but maybe something is on the verge of being official. We live in hope…
THE NEXT ROUND
A far-from-exhaustive rundown of upcoming highlights of the boxing calendar…
5th February 2022
Chris Eubank Jr. vs Liam Williams
Promoter: BOXXER / TV: Sky Sports (UK); FITE TV (US)
After a couple of false dawns due to injuries and the pandemic, it looks like we are officially all systems go on a fight that has been mulled over on the British boxing scene for a number of years. As far as domestic showdowns go, I don't think it gets much better than this - a middleweight clash between fierce rivals with genuine world title aspirations, but moreover it’s just a really great match up, and an excellent regular Sky offering from BOXXER at the start of a big boxing year for both broadcaster and promoter. In terms of the British boxing schedule for the start of this year, there isn’t a fight I’m looking forward to more.
I went into detail last year on the frustrating, enigmatic career-so-far of Chris Eubank Jr. for The 13th Round and pretty much all of the questions around him and his future still remain. He is also, though, undoubtedly one of the most high-profile names in British boxing. At a time when very few active Brits transcend the sport, through a combination of family legacy and his own visibility across media touchpoints, Eubank certainly does. As he is now older than his two-time world champion father when he retired, it’s really now or never for him to deliver on his early promise.
A clear and clinical win here, especially a stoppage, will see him move closer to a potential world title shot and the opportunity to definitively move past his father’s shadow. He is highly ranked in three of the four governing bodies’ top 15 middleweight lists, and he and his promoter Kalle Sauerland have been loud in proclaiming that striving for a world title is the aim this year. I haven’t been blown away by his performances under new trainer Roy Jones Jr. but perhaps they have been working on things and we are about to see a stellar outing.
He will certainly be facing a tougher challenge in the form of Williams, and a more hostile environment with the show taking place in Cardiff. Liam has of course already challenged for world honours, and in his previous outing he lost a clear and unanimous decision to classy WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade in Florida back in April. Williams has proved himself a capable fighter at domestic and fringe world level, however, and he has been crying out for this fight for some time. It’s a really interesting challenge for Eubank with a genuine mean streak about it and should make for a thrilling spectacle. Williams has a good chin and does carry power, whilst Eubank in recent bouts seems to have been caught between his come-forward roots and aping the work of his legendary trainer.
Speaking of trainers, there is also the intriguing subplot of Adam Booth - who once briefly oversaw Eubank and in fact now trains his cousin Harlem - being the new man in the corner for Williams.
If team Eubank gets their strategy right, he should by all rights come away with the win, but boxing is often a sport of fine margins. Junior is the deserved favourite based on their records so far, with Williams falling short when he steps up his class of opponent, but it’s a mouthwatering prospect either way. Defeat here would perhaps be the end for either man’s world level aspirations.
The undercard features WBC, IBF and WBA middleweight champion Claressa Shields making her UK debut against Ema Kozin, in the first fight of a deal that is planned to end with her much-mooted undisputed showdown with WBO titlist Savannah Marshall; former World Youth champion and Team GB Olympian Caroline (sister of Daniel) Dubois will make her pro debut; appearances from Chris’ cousin Harlem Eubank and heavyweight prospect Steve Robinson; and some pretty out of the box matchmaking in the form of Welsh welterweight Chris Jenkins against 38-year-old former unified junior welterweight world champion Julius Indongo. So nothing absolutely blockbuster but enough to hold the interest before the main event, especially considering the small size of BOXXER and Sky’s current roster.
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Keith Thurman vs Mario Barrios
Promoter: Premier Boxing Champions / TV: FOX PPV (US); FITE TV (UK)
Keith Thurman last fought in July 2019…and lost. Mario Barrios last fought in June 2020…and lost. Nobody is clamouring for this fight, it’s not for any sort of world title (be it genuine or ‘regular’ or ‘super duper’ or whatever), there is no historical grudge between the pair and neither fighter has a history of being a huge pay TV draw. Despite all this, it’s been decided that this bout will be available on US pay-per-view for the princely sum of $74.95. It’s an outrageously huge price for a fight which is just not essential viewing. Anyone who purchases both this and PBC’s New Year’s Day Ortiz-Martin pay event Stateside will have shelled out more for their shows by the end of January than it would cost for an entire year’s subscription for DAZN in either the US or the UK. Now, I’m not saying that boxing being locked away behind SVOD subscriptions is particularly healthy for the sport, far from it, but from a pure value perspective, something is off-kilter with the paywalled Premier Boxing Champions offer for 2022.
Analysing the fight itself, there is some merit here from a sporting perspective. Keith Thurman was at one point a major force in the blockbuster welterweight division, reigning as a world champion between 2015 and 2019 and grabbing victories over the likes of Shawn Porter and a then-undefeated Danny Garcia. All of that, however, ground to a halt when Manny Pacquiao dropped and outgunned ‘One Time’ eighteen months ago in the last great night of the career of ‘Pac-Man’. A win would have catapulted Thurman to the top level of the sport, but he has instead spent the time since on the sidelines with an unclear future, in which time the welterweight landscape has seen changes (Yordenis Ugas claiming a world title and retiring Pacquiao, the emergence of outstanding young talents like Jaron Ennis and Vergil Ortiz Jr.) along with some constants (Terence Crawford and Errol Spence hold most of the belts but still haven’t fought each other). It will be interesting to see what Thurman has left for what will realistically be his last run at the top level.
Barrios, on the other hand, is looking to bounce back from a stoppage defeat to Gervonta Davis at super lightweight (where he was the WBA’s ‘regular’ champion, for whatever that’s worth) and prove that he belongs amongst the discussion up at welterweight. This feels like a decent enough comeback fight for Thurman, it’s just a shame a much smaller audience will see it than if it had been placed on regular FOX or Showtime to build anticipation for bigger potential fights down the line, as the intention seems to be for this to be a platform for Thurman.
The undercard features Leo Santa Cruz back at 126 pounds, after an ill-advised move up in weight to be crushingly stopped by Gervonta Davis (him again) back in 2020, against unknown Keenan Carbajal. Josesito Lopez and Abel Ramos also clash in what should be a decent bout but certainly one which doesn’t scream pay-per-view.
I can’t see how this possibly does well behind a paywall, and the reports of tickets in Vegas not selling fast at all do not bode well either. It just feels like some misguided decision-making all round. PBC put on some of the best 2021 had to offer, but this year has not started great from them on pay-per-view at least.