Saturday night Bob Arum’s Top Rank promotions puts on an independent PPV card that no one will buy, but more on that in a bit. The card is at least a triple header with all three guaranteed main card fights being for legit WBO belts headlined by featherweight Oscar Valdez (21-0, 19 KOs) defending against Miguel Marriaga (25-1, 21 KOs). The other two fights on the event are junior featherweight Jessie Magdeleno (24-0, 17 KOs) and super middleweight Gilberto Ramirez (34-0, 24 KOs) defending against Adeilson Dos Santos (18-2, 14 KOs) and Max Bursak (33-4-1, 15 KOs) respectively.
First, let us deal with the fact that this is a PPV. There is no point in complaining about it. Top Rank doesn’t want this show on PPV either, but without a viable TV alternative that is all there is for them to do. In their mind these defenses need to be made to continue developing potential future stars. Neither HBO nor Showtime want them. Where else? The company does not have TV deals like PBC or even Golden Boy right now. Bob Arum and his team expect to lose money on this, but overall they are fine with it given that they expect to make a lot of money off these three guys in the future.
They do have a potential star in headliner Oscar Valdez of Mexico. The 26 year old featherweight is a supremely talented fighter with an astonishing blend of power and speed who has been annihilating his opposition. Many have anointed him the one guy from 126-135 to be the man who could potentially threaten Vasyl Lomachenko in the future. Top Rank, however, still views Valdez with his 21 fights in as a bit of a prospect. No promotional company brings its fighters up more slowly, and now they have someone who they view as a huge prospect with one of the four titles at featherweight.
So far the WBO has been enabling this mindset in allowing Valdez to win the title and defend it against a pretty weak slate of fighters for title challengers. This does not change with Marriaga. The Colombian challenger has had one high profile fight, a 2015 shot at Nicholas Walters on HBO, and he was widely outpointed. Otherwise, while bouncing around between home and here, Marriaga has managed to go 4-0 in the US, but not against top tier fighters. He is a good fighter and accordingly, a really good fighter in Nicholas Walters beat him easily on the cards. Can a great fighter stop him? That is the goal Saturday night for Oscar Valdez.
Jessie Magdaleno earned his title in a competitive win against the still good, formerly great Filipino Nonito Donaire last November. The fight was very close, but youth and speed prevailed on the cards. The Donaire fight was a massive step up for the largely unchallenged Magdaleno, but he passed the test. Now he takes a step back down to fight Brazilian Adeilson Dos Santos of Brazil.
Brazil is a country that generates many, many great fighters, it is just that none of them are boxers. The hot bed for MMA has yet to produce a string of significant world level boxers and Adeilson Dos Santos is not one of the very few exceptions to that rule. Three fights ago he was stopped in two by another Brazilian opponent by the name of Fabian Orozco with only 9 KOs in 27 wins. Orozco is also 2-3-1 in his last six with Dos Santos being one of the two wins. Dos Santos also lost his only previous fight outside of South America, a wide 2012 decision to otherwise untested Kid Galahad in the UK. This is not a good fight.
Southpaw Gilberto Ramirez gets maybe a marginally tougher opponent in Ukrainian Max Bursak, but probably not. Ramirez won his belt in early April last year by comfortably outboxing veteran champion Arthur Abraham. This was a great win made even greater by the ease of victory. Due to the hand surgery caused year layoff that has followed it, however, it has not acted as the coming out party that Ramirez and Top Rank may have hoped it would. Of the three fighters of note on the card, Ramirez built maybe the best resume coming up to his title with wins over mid level opponents like Giovanni Lorenzo, Derek Edwards, Fulgencio Zuniga, etc. Those were good opponents for a prospect and he won them all easily.
Max Bursak is not a good opponent for a titlist. Honestly I am running out of things to say about him that I didn’t say about Marriaga and Dos Santos. Bursak has lost to much, much worse competition than Gilberto Ramirez and not too long ago. He has no business fighting for a title, but here he is on this card like the other two. He does have a win over Nick Blackwell which probably registers as the best win of the three, I guess. That is all there is to this.
US Olympian and potentially big time pro prospect Shakur Stevenson makes his pro debut on this card as well at featherweight. I do not believe this is officially on the broadcast, but I imagine if he looks great, and I strongly suspect he might, that they will find a way to work it in. It only serves their interests to do so.
The show is available on traditional PPV providers and the internet via TopRank.tv for $44.95, but you’re not going to buy it. It especially stands no chance against Porter/Berto on Showtime, but to be real it wouldn’t stand a chance running unopposed either.
