WILL THE UNDER CARD BE HALF AS GOOD AS THE MAIN EVENT?
In a post on his social network accounts without much fanfare except for a eye-catching image of the mentioned fighters, the current pound for pound king Floyd Mayweather Jr reveled the scheduled PPV undercard for his next fight scheduled for Saturday, September 13th at the MGM Grand Las Vegas in Nevada. Mayweather Jr will be performing in only the second direct rematch he has ever granted in his professional career when he faces Marcos “Chino” Maidana from Argentina. They first faced each other back in May where Maidana put up a fight in the first half but the crafty “Money” was able to dominate the action in the second half. Mayweather Jr was awarded a twelve-round majority decision.
Mayweather Jr announced that WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz will be defending his title against Manuel Roman while IBF lightweight titlist Miguel “Titere” Vazquez will defend his title against Mickey Bey. Alfredo Angulo, after being stopped by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, comes back at middleweight against James De La Rosa. Before the PPV fight card gets under way, a different Showtime platform will broadcast the junior welterweight tilt between former three-divisional champion Humberto “Zorrita” Soto vs the hard hitting John Molina Jr.
Last year Floyd Mayweather Jr, the best paid athlete as determined by Forbes Magazine for two years running, signed one of the most lucrative TV contracts ever drawn up with the Showtime network. H promised to fight six times with a guarantee of $30M+ for each fight. His first fight under the agreement was his lopsided unanimous decision over Robert “Ghost Guerrero” in May of 2013. On the televised portion of that fight card we saw Daniel Ponce De Leon get stopped by Abner Mares in a much anticipated fight, J’Leon Love defeat Gabriel Rosado which later was overturned when Love came up positive for PEDs and Santa Cruz defeat Alexander Muñoz. In his fight versus Saul Alvarez last September, Danny Garcia defeated Lucas Matthysse in quite possibly the most asked for fight of 2013, Carlos Molina defeat Ishe Smith for the IBF super welterweight title and Pablo Cesar Cano shock Ashley Theophane.
In his first fight of this year against Maidana, we saw the marquee names of Amir Khan when he beat Luis Collazo, J’Leon Love defeat Marco Antonio Periban in a closely contested super middleweight tilt and Adrien Broner dominate the other Carlos Molina.
Each of those past fight cards had at least one intriguing fight with the rest working as filler before the main event. This upcoming fight card has none of that.
Santa Cruz is facing a much less experienced opponent, nobody in boxing should ever be subjected to a Miguel Vazquez fight and Alfredo Angulo, after his last performance against “Canelo” Alvarez in which he left much to be desired, does not deserve to fight on a PPV card let alone quite possible the most watched of year if not the second most watch if it can’t match the sub-million views which the first Mayweather Jr-Maidana card was rumored to reach.
In the next piece, we will analyzing the actual fights….
