Lopsided 2014 Boxing Matchups That Never Should Have Been Made
In boxing, 2014 has started to look a little bit like "The Year of the Mismatch." The biggest pay-per-view event of the year boasted a co-main event featuring undefeated super bantamweight sensation Leo Santa Cruz vs. his former sparring partner, Manuel Roman, an opponent who had fought (and lost) just one 10-round bout in the past five years.
Highly rated undefeated champions Danny Garcia and Guillermo Rigondeaux fought complete nonentities. The WBC and WBA refused to even sanction Garcia's bout with Rod Salka as a title defense.
Lopsided matchups are always a part of the sport, of course. Part of a boxing manager's job is to pad his fighter's record while putting him at as little risk as possible.
But some of the fights on this list strained the bounds of credibility.
8. Keith Thurman vs. Julio Diaz
1 of 8
I can't actually fault anybody for making this fight. It did look like it made plenty of sense on paper. The veteran Diaz is an ex-world champion who knocked down Amir Khan and fought to a draw against Shawn Porter.
Diaz came to fight against Thurman as well, but the former lightweight was no match for the powerful Thurman. The undefeated welterweight phenom hammered Diaz with a body attack that injured his rib and forced him to retire in his corner following the third round.
While this matchup wasn't inappropriate like some on this list, it did demonstrate that "One Time" is ready to face the biggest names in the welterweight division.
7. Tyson Fury vs. Joey Abell
2 of 8
Tyson Fury doesn't deserve much criticism for making this particular fight. Twice during the year prior he was scheduled to fight a very relevant bout with David Haye, only to have Haye withdraw.
So in February, just to stay busy, Fury fought Joey Abell. Abell is a big, hard-punching journeyman who makes his living being knocked out by heavyweight contenders. In 2011 he was knocked out in Round 1 by Chris Arreola, and in December of last year he was stopped in four by Kubrat Pulev.
In between Arreola and Pulev, he knocked out two obscure fighters and was stopped in nine by Fres Oquendo.
Against Fury, Abell went down four times before getting stopped in Round 4. These kind of bouts are pretty standard fare at heavyweight, but it's a shame Haye's continual indecision led to this laughable mismatch taking place.
6. Wladimir Klitschko vs. Alex Leapai
3 of 8
Blame this one on alphabet soup absurdity. Alex Leapai was the mandatory contender for the WBO portion of Wladimir Klitschko's heavyweight title. It's a distinction he had earned in November of last year by outhustling Denis Boytsov, an undefeated heavyweight who had been coasting for years.
So last April we got another meaningless title defense from Wladimir Klitschko. It was a predictable shellacking, as Klitschko knocked Leapai down in the first round and twice in the fifth before the referee called a halt to the carnage.
I think Klitschko deserves some slack for this one, though, as it is coming sandwiched between defenses against Alexander Povetkin and Kubrat Pulev, the two obvious No. 1 contenders in the world.
.jpg?w=256 "Colts Jaguars Football")
5. Deontay Wilder vs. Jason Gavern
4 of 8
Deontay Wilder is the mandatory challenger for Bermane Stiverne's WBC portion of the heavyweight crown, and if Stiverne wasn't rehabbing a hand injury, that's the fight Wilder would likely have had last August instead of this one-sided slaughter of journeyman Jason Gavern.
So the "Bronze Bomber" deserves a bit of slack for taking a stay-busy fight while waiting for his shot at Stiverne. And his handlers were taking no chances, matching him with the 25-16-4 Gavern.
The thing is, boxing fans have spent years now watching Wilder puff up his record with these kind of mismatches. Gavern hit the canvas in the third and fourth rounds then retired in his corner prior to the fifth.
4. Deontay Wilder vs. Malik Scott
5 of 8
Coming into this fight last April, it looked like it should be the toughest test of Deontay Wilder's career. Malik Scott is one of the most technically skilled fighters in the heavyweight division. I thought he clearly deserved the win in his draw with highly rated heavyweight contender Vyacheslav Glazkov.
In the ring, though, this one played out in just 94 seconds, as Wilder floored Scott with a left hook/straight right combination. When the replay was shown on the big screen, the live crowd in Puerto Rico booed lustily.
Neither punch landed cleanly. Speculation of a fix was instant and widespread.
I have no evidence that allows me to comment on such an allegation, and Wilder's hook did connect behind Scott's ear, which causes major destabilization. A monster puncher like Wilder doesn't have to land flush to land hard.
But what I saw with my own eyes convinces me that, at the very least, Scott did not show up planning to make a real fight of things. From wearing a bag over his head at the weigh-ins to failing to throw a single punch during the entire fight, Scott just didn't look like a guy who came to win. Scott has excellent defensive movement, but he basically camped out inside of Wilder's range.
There's taking a dive, which is one thing. Then there is embracing the role of the "opponent."
Scott and Wilder have been frequent sparring partners, so Wilder knew what kind of power he was going to be facing. If he wasn't prepared to stand up to it, he shouldn't have made the fight.
3. Guillermo Rigondeaux vs. Sod Kokietgym
6 of 8
I do understand that following Guillermo Rigondeaux's one-sided unanimous decision over Nonito Donaire, Top Rank and HBO had a shortage of worthy opponents to match up with the Cuban star. But I have to think they could have done better than Sod Kokietgym if they really wanted to.
On paper, the Thai native's record looked impressive enough. Entering his fight with Rigondeaux last July in Macau, he was 63-2-1.
But that record was built against obscure .500 journeymen and extremely low-level prospects. Kokietgym's only opponent of note had been Daniel Ponce de Leon, who beat him twice in 2005 and 2006, the second time by Round 1 KO.
BoxRec didn't even have him rated in its top 50 super bantamweights in the world going into this fight.
Rigo's utter disdain for this matchup seemed obvious from the start. He made extremely quick work of the "challenger," stopping him just 1:44 into the first frame.
With his Top Rank contract now done, perhaps Rigondeaux can get fights worthy of him, such as showdowns with fellow undefeated 122-pound champions Carl Frampton and Leo Santa Cruz.
2. Leo Santa Cruz vs. Manuel Roman
7 of 8
When I first saw that undefeated WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz was defending his belt against Manuel Roman as the co-main event on the Floyd Mayweather-Marcos Maidana rematch, my first thought was: "Wait, who the heck is Manuel Roman?"
"Am I missing something?" I wondered. "Should I know who this guy is?" Then I looked him up on BoxRec and got my answer: not really.
In his entire career entering this fight, Roman had fought just two scheduled 10-round fights, with the last a unanimous-decision loss in 2012. His last fight prior to Santa Cruz was a six-round unanimous decision over 15-10 Jose Silveria.
So after assuring myself there was no good reason I should have been familiar with Roman, my next obvious question was: "How the heck is the WBC even sanctioning this fight?"
During the pay-per-view broadcast, the Showtime team tried to make a lot out of the fact that Santa Cruz and Roman had spent time as sparring partners and that both men claimed their sparring sessions had been "wars."
But once the actual fight began, Santa Cruz quickly demonstrated what anybody who has ever been in a fight gym already knew, that there is a world of difference between a sparring session and an actual fight. Santa Cruz retained his title, winning by TKO just 55 seconds into Round 2.
1. Danny Garcia vs. Rod Salka
8 of 8
If this was an earlier era, when champions often fought a half-dozen times or more in a single year, nobody would begrudge Danny Garcia a fight like this one. Sugar Ray Robinson and Henry Armstrong fought plenty of non-title bouts against their generation's versions of Rod Salka.
But in this era of boxing, champions like Garcia usually fight fewer than four times a year. Most likely, Garcia's stoppage of Salka will be one of just two fights this year for the WBA and WBC light welterweight champion.
So the standards for quality of opposition have to go up as the work rate goes down.
Salka is a legitimate professional fighter, but he wasn't even rated at lightweight. So he was hardly a legitimate opponent for a world champion at 140 pounds.
Garcia knocked Salka down three times in the second round before the referee waved off the count. It was a dominant performance for the undefeated champion, but it did very little for his reputation.
.jpg?w=480 "Colts Jaguars Football")
