PBC Must Start Making Better Fights to Have a True Impact on Boxing

Al Haymon’s Premier Boxing Champions series shook the boxing landscape earlier this year with a series of time-buy agreements with major networks (CBS and NBC) and cable heavyweights (ESPN, Spike TV, etc.) that promised to place quality free boxing in front of large, mainstream sports audiences.

It’s an ambitious and welcome endeavor that has the potential to spark a resurgence in the sweet science on par with the glory days, when network television coverage was the lifeblood of the sport.

And give the folks at the helm (and anyone with a Twitter or a microphone) some credit. They’ve done a great job of staying on-message and selling the free angle while conveniently ignoring that many matchups fall far short of quality.

Before you toss this in the dustbin as just another anti-PBC/anti-Haymon diatribe, it’s worth noting that PBC has had its share of quality fights on paper, even if they haven’t always panned out in the ring.

Keith Thurman vs. Robert Guerrero was a solid welterweight showdown in the main event of the inaugural card on NBC in March, and Danny Garcia vs. Lamont Peterson and Adrien Broner vs. Shawn Porter were cable-quality bouts that had both demand and significance.

Leo Santa Cruz and Abner Mares are set to do battle in late summer’s biggest fight on August 29 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and even if it’s a managed risk, it might be the best of the lot yet.

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Nobody is expecting PBC to get it right 100 percent of the time, and those who do are being disingenuous and holding out an impossible standard that nobody (neither HBO, Showtime nor anyone else) can meet.

All you can do is make the best matches possible on paper and let the chips fall where they may, and that is where PBC has opened itself up to far too much legitimate criticism. Some of the matches don't just stink once the guys get in the ring; you can see them coming from a mile away.

Haymon has long been the recipient of criticism (fair and unfair) about his propensity for safely managing his fighters and avoiding risks.

So it’s no surprise that the target is squarely back on him after the announcement of a trio of truly pitiful mismatches on the same weekend of boxing in mid-September.

Floyd Mayweather (for years Haymon’s top client) will face Andre Berto September 12 on Showtime PPV (for the ridiculous sticker price of $65 in SD and $75 in HD), but the fight isn’t part of PBC, so we’ll let others tell you why the fight is a bad match for everyone involved.

Kicking off the weekend on September 11 will be the lineal and WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson in his latest disappointing defense against club fighter Tommy Karpency in Toronto.

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Stevenson is a tremendous puncher who won the 175-pound crown with a scintillating one-punch demolition of Chad Dawson in 2013. But his reign has been a disappointment bordering on an outright joke.

Since jumping ship to Haymon and Showtime (avoiding now-unified and, in many eyes, legitimate champion Sergey Kovalev in the process) Stevenson has taken a slew of mismatches, but none bigger than Karpency.

Karpency has won four in a row (three coming against opponents with records of 23-21-2, 27-24-7, and 23-26-2) with the lone notable win a split decision over a badly faded Dawson.

He was hopelessly outclassed each time he stepped up in competition, suffering a seventh-round knockout against Andrzej Fonfara and losing blowout decisions to Nathan Cleverly and Karo Murat.

And yet this is the man selected for a shot at not just a light heavyweight championship but the light heavyweight championship.

That’s even worse than Sakio Bika (a former super middleweight champion past his best and coming up in weight) and the anonymous Dmitry Sukhotsky, the last two to achieve such stature.

Instead of that garbage, why not give Fonfara a rematch? The Pole is coming off a career-best win over Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and gave a good account of himself by knocking Stevenson down in their May 2014 bout before losing in a decision.

The cream in this rotten Oreo cookie of a boxing weekend (between Stevenson-Karpency and Mayweather-Berto) pits former middleweight titlist Peter Quillin against a ridiculously long shot, Michael Zerafa, in the headline bout of PBC on NBC just hours before the Showtime PPV goes live.

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Zerafa is a once-beaten Aussie who has just four of his 17 wins over fighters with winning records. Only one of those had more than 10 professional wins, while the others were the 4-0 and 5-2 sort.

Tom Craze, who covers boxing lines for Bad Left Hook, tweeted shortly after the announcement of the fight that one prominent online sportsbook opened Zerafa as a massive 200-1 underdog.

That’s not just a mismatch; it’s grotesque.

The only saving grace is that Quillin, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN, will face WBA “regular” middleweight champion (Gennady Golovkin is the real champion) Daniel Jacobs for that title later in the year, should all go according to plan.

If you can call that fight a plan.

Zerafa was chosen, according to Rafael, for the "express purpose that he does not pose much of a danger to Quillin" as he readies for Jacobs.

Boy, what a selling point that makes.

Quillin will probably get more out of his sparring partners than in the ring on fight night.

So why all this vitriol, especially from a writer who has generally been less critical of PBC than many others?

We all like free boxing, especially in the age of promoters and networks too quick to call PPV for fights that don’t truly belong there.

Free boxing has the potential—when done right—to mainstream and grow the sport, which is something we can all agree is (to steal from WWE’s Triple H) best for business.

But PBC (or any other enterprise that wants to build the sport) has to offer better bouts than these types of trashy, garbage fights that do nothing for the fighters and turn off the fans.

Kevin McRae is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. You can follow him on Twitter @McRaeWrites.