The Biggest Questions in Boxing That Will Be Answered in 2015
Boxing faces many questions in the new year.
You can’t really look at the past 12 months as anything less than a disappointment for the sweet science.
Big fights that should’ve happened didn’t.
Pay-per-view numbers, even among the sport’s biggest attractions, were down across the board.
Promotional upheavals and shifting loyalties put some big names in tight spots.
And we’re still talking about Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao everywhere but where it matters.
See? Lots of questions.
Here we ponder the 10 biggest ones that will (hopefully) be answered in 2015.
Will the Big Fight Finally Happen?
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It’s the one fight on every boxing fan’s mind.
Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao will finally meet this year for a bout that is almost guaranteed to shatter every revenue record in the sport.
Or they won’t.
Delightfully simple premise, isn’t it?
What you’re not going to find here is a recap of the sordid state of affairs that has inexplicably gotten us to 2015 without a once-in-a-generation event featuring the two Hall of Fame fighters who have defined this generation.
Been there and done that.
It seems like we’ve been giving artificial deadlines for years now—because we have—but there’s a real sense that it's now or never.
For real this time.
Mayweather will turn 38 years old next month, a dangerous number for a fighter who relies on timing and reflexes to stay a step ahead of his foes. As great as he is and has been throughout his career, it could all disappear overnight.
Pacquiao is a little younger, and unlike Mayweather hasn’t publicly stated his plans to retire from the sport once his current contract expires. He’s stepped up his public aggression in an attempt to land the fight, seemingly because the clock is rapidly ticking toward midnight.
So that’s it, folks.
We have 12 months to get it done, or it’s gone for good.
Just another of life’s great unanswered questions.
Can Gennady Golovkin Secure a Big Fight?
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Gennady Golovkin just might end 2015 as the No. 1 pound-for-pound fighter in boxing.
But there are a couple of ifs and buts.
Allow me to predict some of your responses.
Some of you will agree and present your case as some sort of criticism of Mayweather. Others will call me a crackpot for overhyping a guy who, in your words, “hasn’t beaten anybody.”
GGG’s path to boxing’s top spot begins and ends with the type of elite-level challenges that have thus far eluded him. He’s risen through the ranks with meteoric speed but hasn’t yet figured out a way to get a top-tier fighter to share the same square-shaped office with him for 36 (or fewer) minutes.
It hasn’t been for lack of trying.
Golovkin’s manager Tom Loeffler says his charge will continue taking fights against the best opponents that are available—next up is Martin Murray in February—until the dam cracks and somebody acquires the requisite courage to face him.
Canelo Alvarez’s team has expressed a willingness to take the fight, even as Miguel Cotto’s legal adviser seemed to indicate they’d be seeking higher-reward fights first, which could be the measuring stick for how good the Kazakh bomber can be.
Here’s hoping a big fight comes soon, because some of us really want to know.
Who Will Miguel Cotto Choose?
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It’s been just two years since the majority of boxing writers and fans left Miguel Cotto for dead on the cold streets of New York City.
Not literally, of course, but certainly when it came to his future career prospects.
Cotto lost back-to-back fights in 2012, the first understandably so to Mayweather in Las Vegas but the second surprisingly to Austin Trout on his adopted home turf of Madison Square Garden.
The one-sided nature of the Trout fight left many wondering if the wars had finally caught up to the Puerto Rican legend, and it seemed reasonable to speculate that he’d call it a career.
If you bet the farm on that one, I feel sorry for you.
Cotto rested, recharged, hired Freddie Roach to run his corner and returned nearly a year later with a vintage blowout performance against the usually durable Delvin Rodriguez.
That set the stage for an even more impressive upset of Sergio Martinez to capture the middleweight championship and become the first Puerto Rican four-division world champion.
And now, just a few days into 2015, Cotto is boxing’s most sought-after fighter.
Canelo wants him.
Mayweather may want him as well.
Golovkin wants him.
Timothy Bradley wants him.
It’s widely expected that Canelo will be the ultimate winner of the sweepstakes—Cotto’s team hopes to have negotiations resolved next week—but, boy, for a guy left for dead, Cotto sure has come back in a big way.
Choices, choices.
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Will Floyd Mayweather Retire?
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Mayweather signed a record six-fight deal with Showtime early in 2013 with the caveat that he would hang up the gloves and trunks for good at its conclusion, something he recently reiterated.
Time sure does fly, doesn’t it?
We are rapidly approaching that self-imposed expiration date.
Mayweather enters 2015 with just two fights left on his deal—which are expected to be on his traditional May and September dates—and a whole bunch of questions swirling about.
Will Canelo knock him off his traditional Mexican holiday weekend fight dates, and if so, when will he fight?
What about Pacquiao?
If not Manny, who?
This could go on for a while.
The key question could well be whether or not he still plans to retire after what would be the 49th fight of his professional career later in the year.
Mayweather is certainly a polarizing figure, but love him or hate him, he’s brought unprecedented attention to the sport of boxing during his reign. Things won’t be the same without him when he eventually does retire.
But he’s a businessman before he’s a fighter, and if he manages to get to next year at this point with a 49-0 record, as a network free agent, it would probably be foolish for him not to command a king’s ransom for a shot at No. 50.
Will Juan Manuel Marquez Budge?
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Juan Manuel Marquez wants a welterweight title.
Not just for its own sake, but to become the first Mexican five-division champion in boxing history.
But he has a problem.
The 41-year-old has rebuffed every attempt to get him back into the ring with longtime rival Pacquiao for a fifth fight, but the Filipino icon has something he desperately wants: the WBO Welterweight Championship.
Mayweather has the WBA and WBC straps, and there’s a less-than-zero market for a rematch of the one-sided beating he gave Marquez in 2009.
The lone unaccounted belt belongs to unbeaten Brit Kell Brook, but the IBF champion seems to have other lucrative bouts that are more marketable and lucrative sitting right on his doorstep.
Where does that leave Marquez and his pursuit of history?
Shut out.
You’d have to think that a Pacquiao fight could be hashed out without too much trouble, and right now that’s the only viable path for Marquez to pursue his dream.
It’s not like he has the time to wait around in the hopes that one of the current champions gets dethroned, right?
He might just have to budge.
But will he?
Does Keith Thurman Take the Next Step?
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Keith Thurman entered last year as a prospect and left it in much the same way.
For "One Time," the last year was the definition of disappointing. Poor matchmaking—horrendous really—and injuries zapped a bit of the steam off the fastball of one of boxing’s potentially elite talents.
And that’s just the problem.
Thurman doesn’t have the talent to be good, or even very good. He can be elite, which is why he deals with the bar set slightly higher than other fighters of his age and experience level.
But he’s not going to get there by fighting long-faded former champions from lower weight classes, or unknown 40-year-olds whose only claim to fame are undefeated records earned against...whom exactly?
That type of matchmaking needs to stop, because it leads nowhere.
A showdown with Marcos Maidana was discussed after Thurman’s distressingly boring win over Leonard Bundu last month. That’s the type of fight that brings both fireworks and advances careers.
It’s exactly the step he needs to make the jump to the next level, and hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later, but ESPN.com's Dan Rafael doesn't think you should count on it.
Team Maidana wasn't impressed with Thurman's performance against Bundu—who was?—and doesn't yet view him on Chino's level.
They think he should instead pursue the Shawn Porters and Robert Guerreros of the world, and you know what?
That would be just fine.
Will Al Haymon Take Risks with His Fighters?
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Jim Lampley stuck a rather large harpoon into boxing’s uber-manager Al Haymon on 2014’s final edition of The Fight Game, slamming the reclusive power broker for watering down the sport by steering his fighters clear of risky fights.
Let’s add a little disclaimer before we go any further.
Haymon’s job is to make money for his fighters. That’s the business aspect of the sport that often gets forgotten. He must be pretty good at his job, given the 100-plus fighters—and growing—he currently has under contract.
Nobody should begrudge athletes who try to get the most financial security out of their talents during the finite amount of time they have.
But whether or not that risk-averse management style is best for the fans and the sport is a whole different question.
Is Thurman, a blue-chip prospect, fighting Julio Diaz—whose best days were long past and at a lower weight—and Bundu good for the sport?
Was there really no better option for Danny Garcia, the recognized light welterweight champion of the world, than a disturbingly overmatched smaller man, Rod Salka?
Did Adonis Stevenson help the sport or his career by taking his lineal light heavyweight championship into a battle with Dmitry Sukhotsky rather than Bernard Hopkins or Jean Pascal?
Again, money is part of the equation, but as fans and writers the obligation is to the sport and not the personal enrichment of any one fighter or manager.
Haymon has his job to do, and he’s not nearly as bad as some of his worst critics make it seem, but 2014 was clearly a year in which many of the best fights involving his clients—some of which could have easily been put together—did not happen.
And, yes, that's bad for the sport if it continues.
Does Terence Crawford Have the Goods to Be Pound-for-Pound?
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Terence Crawford had himself some sort of coming-out party last year.
The Nebraska native captured his first world championship by going on the road to beat Ricky Burns in the notoriously unfriendly (for a road fighter at least) confines of Scotland.
He followed that up by bringing big-time boxing to his hometown of Omaha, knocking out previously unbeaten Yuriorkis Gamboa in a scintillating fight in front of a sold-out crowd.
His encore performance was an every-bit-as-impressive shutdown of rugged veteran challenger Ray Beltran in November.
Three quality wins over high-level opposition is the way you become a star in this sport.
Crawford said after beating Beltran that he would be jettisoning the world title he won at 135 pounds and move up in weight to light welterweight. That has led to some serious speculation about the possibility of a showdown with Pacquiao in the not-too-distant future.
That might be rushed just a bit, but 140 pounds could present Crawford with intriguing challenges, including Ruslan Provodnikov, Chris Algieri and Jessie Vargas, before he steps in with one of boxing’s icons.
Then we’ll see if Crawford can make it two great years in a row and establish his pound-for-pound bona fides.
Is Vasyl Lomachenko the Next Big Thing?
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Vasyl Lomachenko, the two-time Olympic gold medalist regarded as quite possibly the best amateur fighter in history, has established himself among the sport's elite in just four professional bouts.
The 26-year-old lost a controversial decision to rugged veteran Orlando Salido in March—Salido came into the fight overweight, was noticeably bigger and excessively fouled—before bouncing back to win a world title against Gary Russell Jr. in June.
Winning a featherweight title tied Lomachenko at three for fewest professional fights before capturing a world championship.
Lomachenko followed up that performance by winning a shutout unanimous decision from Chonlatarn Piriyapinyo on the Pacquiao vs. Chris Algieri undercard in Macau.
Beating Piriyapinyo on its own might not seem like a big deal, but when you consider that Lomachenko fought with only one good hand for half of the fight and won every round anyway, you might want to reconsider.
Fighters often struggle a bit when making the transition from the amateurs to the professional ranks. It would’ve been reasonable to expect that in this case, given the extensive amateur pedigree of Lomachenko.
Nope.
He’s not only legitimate, but already quite possibly the best featherweight in the world.
A unification fight matching his combination punching and ring generalship against Nicholas Walters’ power is truly salivating and should be on every fight fan's wish list coming into this year.
Can We Get Some Love for the Smaller Guys?
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Pop quiz time.
Raise your hands if the following two names mean anything to you:
Roman Gonzalez.
Naoya Inoue.
If they don’t, then you’ve been done a tremendous disservice.
Gonzalez is the undefeated, power-punching flyweight champion who absolutely loves that he gets to throw and eat fists for a living. He’s finally gotten some pound-for-pound love as a freakishly powerful smaller man who has laid waste to his division.
Want a good primer? Check out his 2012 fight with Juan Francisco Estrada.
Inoue is a 21-year-old who has become a multi-division world champion in just eight fights, including a two-round demolition of longtime champion Omar Narvaez on Dec. 30.
Got that?
Eight fights and world titles at junior and super flyweight.
It’s a shame that the smaller guys don’t get much attention in the United States, but with two guys like Gonzalez and Inoue patrolling those waters, hopefully that will change in 2015.
Especially if they wind up fighting each other.
Get your popcorn ready, and don't blink.
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