Not to be confused with the Round Mound of Rebound.
We’ll stay at around 147 to 160 pounds for a while for some of the top names there, then move on to everybody else.
Miguel Cotto has no interest in fighting Kermit Cintron and plans to take the rest of the year off. The thinking, I guess, is that Cintron isn’t a big enough fight for Cotto’s tastes. I like Cotto-Cintron better than the other choices, though: Cotto wants rematches with Manny Pacquiao or Antonio Margarito, or he wants Julio Cesar Chavez, Jr. Cotto-Chavez is actually the rare fight that Top Rank DOES need to “marinate,” but it’s the one I’d guess happens next for Cotto when the time comes he returns to the ring.
Shane Mosley himself also wants Pacquiao or Margarito (again), or Cotto. I’d be interested in Cotto-Mosley II among those, if Mosley insists on continuing his career, and he does.
Chavez, he looks like he’s going to fight Alfonso Gomez in the Dec. 4 pay-per-view main event, and while Gomez is a bit small for him, he’s probably a step forward from John Duddy as an opponent. I don’t have much of a problem with it happening but I don’t care about it. Other potential fights on the Top Rank pay-per-view, which at least the company’s being upfront about not all of them happening, are Vanes Martirosyan-Pawel Wolak (fine but not that interesting), and lightweight bouts between Brandon Rios and Miguel Acosta (I like this one a fair deal, and because Acosta can move, he presents a potential challenge to Rios) and Humberto Soto-Urbano Antillon (which would be a reasonable fight for Soto but Soto hasn’t had a reasonable fight in a long time; Ring still moved him up in the rankings for some reason after his latest crap win last weekend, but at least they dropped Anthony Mundine from the middleweight rankings).
Andre Berto might still fight Selcuk Aydin in his next bout or he might fight Freddy Hernandez. Both are as acceptable as most anything else out there for him. Berto has become the poster boy for dumb career decisions after a series of mistakes, the latest turning down what now looks like would have been a highly winnable fight with Mosley because he wanted an undeserved 50-50 split. Now where’s he going to go? If he beats Mosley now, he won’t get much credit for it, after the way Mosley looked in his last fight. So what’s that leave him? Pacquiao won’t give him the time of day, I guarantee it, nor will Cotto, I bet (Bob Arum, notorious liar, said Berto’s team wanted better than 50 percent of the money for a fight with Cotto, although I have no idea if that was an initial negotiating position or what, but it’s crazy if true).
OK, so back to that Chavez-Gomez card for a sec — Nonito Donaire might be fighting at least a good opponent in his next bout on that undercard, Wladimir Sidorenko, a huge upgrade from his recent competition. Sidorenko has two close losses to Anselmo Moreno, and, somehow, TWO draws with Ricardo Cordoba, but he has wins over Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym and Joseph Agbeko. He’s not in Ring’s top 1 anymore but he’s top 10-level talent, something Donaire hasn’t faced in two years. God this makes me mad.
Recent rumored Donaire opponent Fernando Montiel claims that Vic Darchinyan is hiding from him but I doubt it. Darchinyan doesn’t seem like the hiding type, and he says it’s the other way around.
Heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko is going to have a tough time finding an opponent; Jean-Marc Mormeck reportedly said “no” for now, and there have been talks with British heavy Derek Chisora coming off his good win over Sam Sexton and after Chisora couldn’t make a fight with Nicolay Valuev. With David Haye hiding, Alexander Povetkin backing out of a recent fight, Tomasz Adamek not willing to fight Klitschko until next year, brother Vitali unwilling to fight brother Wladimir and vice versa and Odlanier Solis more in line for Vitali, Chisora’s not a worse option than anyone else.
Junior welterweight Victor Ortiz could fight John Murray on the undercard of Amir Khan-Marcos Maidana. I dig it.
Same day on Dec. 11, light heavyweight Jurgen Braehmer could defend his strap against Nathan Cleverly. That’d be a big day in British boxing with Khan’s bout the same day, and a big day in boxing overall what with Showtime’s bantam tourney that day too.
On the Pacquiao-Margarito undercard, after numerous opponent switches, Kelly Pavlik looks like he’ll end up in a 164-pound bout with Bryan Vera. On the scale of potential opponents, that’s a notch below Giovanni Lorenzo and a notch above Daniel Edouard. Vera makes a hard living, man. He keeps taking on big punchers and getting whooped on by them, although every now and then he gets an upset win, like against Andy Lee or Sebastien Demers. I bet Pavlik-Vera is the “whooped on” kind.
Lee, by the way, might fight John Duddy next on Dec. 4. That’s some all-Irish action there, although with Duddy taking such a nasty beating last time out, I wonder that it isn’t more a stepping stone for Lee than anything else.
Lee also was listed as a possible opponent for Allan Green in the Showtime super middleweight tournament, although more likely, it would seem to me, are rumored potential opponents Robert Stieglitz and Dimitri Sartison (the last name in the mix is Brian Magee, which isn’t that viable). Green strikes me as sitting in the catbird seat a little bit with the new Super Six arrangement, after originally starting in a real hole by coming in as a replacement. There’s no way Green will be fighting an opponent close to as good as anyone else in the rest of the tournament, and with a knockout, more likely against lesser opposition, he has a very good chance of cracking into the semifinals.
Here’s yet more Dec. 4 business: They’re trying again at Golden Boy to make a welterweight fight between Saul Alvarez and Matthew Hatton. I bet it’s a good action fight. And, it seems, they’re keeping Alvarez away from quick opponents. The opinions on Alvarez are all over the map, with some seeing potential greatness and others, like me, seeing a guy who will get eaten up by someone faster. We won’t know any better after Alvarez-Hatton if I’m right.
Rashad Holloway wants some Antwone Smith, which would be a good fight for both young welters as they try to rebound from a draw and loss, respectively.
Miguel Vazquez, one of my current new faves, might defend his new lightweight belt against Hank Lundy, who recently rebounded from his first loss. I like that one, too.
Action fighters on the move: Featherweight Jhonny Gonzalez wants Juan Manuel Lopez or Elio Rojas, although others are ahead of him for both bouts right now; and lightweight Jorge Barrios is due for a comeback against Humberto Martinez Oct. 1, who figures as a safe opponent.
More Martinezes: Junior lightweight Rocky Martinez might do an all-Puerto Rican clash Dec. 11 (there’s that date again!) with prospect Luis Cruz, and since both are prone to punching hard, it could be fun. Cruz just isn’t sure he’s ready yet, and he’s probably right. And two junior bantams might get their second chances at a title if one beats the other in an eliminator — Raul Martinez and Rodrigo Guerrero, on Nov. 20, on Fox Sports en Espanol.
Fun featherweight prospect Jorge Diaz will fight veteran-on-the-decline Emmanuel Lucero Oct. 30.
(Round and Round sources: ESPN; BoxingScene; The Sweet Science; The Belfast Telegraph)
