(Seth Mitchell, left, Chris Arreola, right; credit: Esther Lin, Showtime)
For as much as has been made of heavyweight Chris Arreola not being such a giant fat ass for the last year plus, it's also not the case that he ever looks fully prepared. Maybe it won't matter against Seth Mitchell, who probably won't be able to stand up to Arreola's power but might be able to rock the usually sturdy Arreola. But Arreola doesn't wear 242 lbs. all that well. It should be fun as long as it lasts Saturday night on Showtime; maybe it wouldn't have as good a chance to be fun if Arreola was cut and toned, so perhaps we can thank him for it.
This is our usual throat-clearing just before a big fight week, and we'll go full throttle on that starting Sunday evening. We'll even talk a little about the main event due Sept. 14, as you can ascertain from the headline. But before that, what we'll do until then is this Quick Jabs round-up of boxing news; a Round And Round round-up of fights in the works; and recaps of Arreola-Mitchell, as well as the card on A Wealth of Entertainment (AWE) headlined by lightweights Ricky Burns and Raymundo Beltran. I'm picking Beltran in that one, btw.
Quick Jabs
Canelo Alvarez, according to his promoter Oscar De La Hoya, is at 157.4 seven days before the weigh-in for Sept. 14's Showtime pay-per-view against Floyd Mayweather. He needs to get down to 152. I'm less worried now than when he was at 166.8 30 days out, if De La Hoya is speaking the truth, although the last few pounds are the hardest. I just have to say, this whole All Access debate about who requested the catchweight of 152 is ridiculous. Originally Mayweather's team contended that Alvarez requested the catchweight. Hogwash. All they ever said is that they were willing, or ready, to move down in weight for the fight. No boxer ever requests to give away a weight advantage. If Mayweather's team was true to its word that catchweights are bunk, they wouldn't have accepted it even if Canelo's team had requested it. Eventually, Mayweather's team has changed their story to say Canelo was dumb to have ever said he would accept a catchweight, and what figther would ever turn down an advantage? That's at least honest…
The CBS-Time Warner Cable feud is over, which means there's no chance whatsoever you TWC subscribers will miss the chance to see Mayweather-Canelo, and which means you'll see this weekend's Arreola-Mitchell card if you're a TWC customer. I'm so heppy for you all. So very heppy. I, meanwhile, am stuck with Comcast/Xfinity…
Some recent ratings: The HBO Darren Barker-Daniel Geale middleweight showdown did below average ratings, as did the recent Jhonny Gonzalez-Abner Mares featherweight show. After bouncing the reasons why off people on Twitter, we can conclude a few reasons why: Barker-Geale was an all-foreign card; Gonzalez-Mares was a match-up of sub-lightweight fighters, and those cards rarely do well; and both cards came during the ratings down period of August. The debut of the new Fox Sports 1 card also did pretty poor ratings, even for a new show in a bad time slot — compared to the Fox Sports 1 UFC card, anyway. And All Access, promoting Canelo-Alvarez, also isn't tearing up the ratings, although it's worth noting that these ain't the days of the debut of HBO 24/7, and the figures don't account for total viewership….
Although there are some ways in which Showtime isn't going as all-out for Mayweather-Canelo as I expected, there are some others. For instance, a recent Xfinity commercial said you can get three free months of Showtime if you order the PPV. This is all in line with the Showtime strategy of making big short-term investments for the sake of long-term gain — even if they are losing money on Mayweather, as som have suggested, it's clear that they're trying to use him to reel in new subscribers (and I'm sure he's fine with Showtime giving away product in order to boost his ability to eclipse his PPV buy record). That level of expenditure explains in part why Adrien Broner-Marcos Maidana (welterweight) in November or December might be on PPV. This kind of crazy spending caught up to HBO eventually as it put a bunch of needless PPV cards on, at least as far as the fans are concerned — they create revenue streams that can help pay fighters' big purses, but they also eventually shrink the audience of the sport…
Speaking of HBO 24/7: controversial Juan Manuel Marquez adviser Memo Heredia said on Twitter recently (between suggesting that Victor Conte's daughter was a whore, or a madam) that he wouldn't be participating in the show for Marquez's upcoming welterweight bout with Timothy Bradley. It's not a good look at all for a guy whose performance enhancing drug past has made him a shady figure, even if it turns out he has some reasonable cause for avoiding the show. I'm not sure what to make of this PED/lawsuits story by Thomas Hauser leading off with Marquez's fight against Manny Pacquiao, although I suppose it's an interesting piece overall. I'm also not sure why Bradley is suicidal. SPARRING with Lucas Matthysse, especially after getting beat up in a win over Ruslan Provodnikov? He's a maniac, this Bradley. A brave, brave maniac…
The aforementioned Pacquiao recently sprained his ankle playing basketball. I knew this would happen eventually. I used to sprain my ankle almost every time I played basketball, and I play it a lot, although my ankles are also made of gingerbread. I also once dislocated my pinky finger so badly playing basketball that it was bent backwards and sideways. It's miraculous that it's taken this long for the hoopin' Floyd or Manny to get hurt…
There is absolutely nothing I can say about super middleweight champion Andre Ward's negotiations with Edwin Rodriguez that David Greisman didn't say here. I agree with it fully…
While promoting Mayweather-Canelo, De La Hoya has shat all over Robert Guerrero, Mayweather's last opponent. While there might be some reason for a promoter to shit all over one of its fighters on occasion, it simply never strikes me as a great long-term prospect. Even if De La Hoya is ticked at Guerrero for turning down a Keith Thurman fight, he'll eventually have to promote Guerrero again. And the last words out of his mouth about Guerrero are about how crappy he is…
Fighter obits are almost always a difficult balancing act for me. A fighter like middleweight Emile Griffith passing away recently is more significant in any historical way than the more recent passing of heavyweight Tommy Morrison, yet Griffith's demise was not noted in this space. Morrison's demise might leave me with words about his in-ring career — "fun but flawed," is the best description — or his performance in Rocky V — I don't hate Rocky V as much as everyone else does! At the same time, the man denied that he had HIV and boasted about having unprotected sex every day, so he might have infected and even killed a great number of people. I know that someone's death is usually a cause to celebrate what was good about them, but it's hard to celebrate under the circumstances…
As friend of the site @fight_ghost said of the video below, "I have no words."
