The general consensus in the boxing world is that 2015 was pretty much a bust. We had the much anticipated face-off between arch rival Floyd Mayweather Jr and Manny Pacquiao which turned out to be money grab more than an actual fight. We had to wait until near the end of the year to get a couple of big time events despite Mayweather Jr doing his last fight (allegedly) in September against Andre Berto. In October we had Golovkin unify the IBF title to his already WBA and interim WBC middleweight straps with an eighth round stoppage of the Canadian. In November we got the much anticipated WBC middleweight title fight with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez taking a unanimous decision over Miguel Cotto.
Now the New Year is gearing up and some interesting fights are on the horizon but none of them have actually been made and some have actually been scratched. Case in point was the proposed WBC flyweight fight between champion Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez and former title holder Giovanni Segura for March. Segura even went as far as to skip out of his fight against Luis Concepcion some weeks ago to make the Gonzalez fight but just last Gonzalez posted on his twitter that he was misled and he does not have a date much less an opponent.
The first half of the year has scheduled some good fights but not any super events just yet. The season starts this month with the double heavyweight title bill on the 16th from the Barclays Center in Brooklyn with WBC champ Deontay Wilder defending against Artur Szpilka and unbeaten Charles Martin fighting fellow undefeated Vyacheslav Glazkov for the vacant IBF title on Showtime. The same night we see the return of fellow heavyweight David Haye from the O2 Arena in London when he faces Mark De Mori. The PBC comes back the following week on the 23rd with a big fight card scheduled for the Staple Center with former champ Danny Garcia facing fellow former champ Robert Guerrero on welterweigh on Fox. If that wasn’t enough to open up the first month of the New Year, WBO, IBF and WBA light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev rematches Jean Pascal on HBO on the 30th.
Big action from across the pond in February with the much anticipated fight between WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg and IBF champ Carl Frampton on the 27th from the Manchester Arena in England.
More important heavyweight action came in early March when former champ Ruslan Chagaev faces Lucas Browne for the WBA “regular” title. It is expected for Andre Ward to come up at the end of March against an opponent to be named but it is expected to be Cuban Sullivan Barrera. This fight will mark Ward’s first fight in the light heavyweight division.
We all know that April brings us the third installment of Manny Pacquiao against Timothy Bradley on the ninth with Brit heavyweight prospect perhaps facing Dereck Chisora in London the same night. Near the end of the month we’ll see Gennady Golovkin once again with Saul “Canelo” Alvarez coming back in May.
