Jorge Linares defends his lightweight title against Mercito Gesta Saturday night on HBO while Lucas Matthysse meets a completely unknown fighter from Thailand by the name of Tewa Kiram in the co-main event. This is not the HBO brand we have come to know over the years, but the politics of boxing television have clearly shifted.
Before talking about the fights, let’s get the HBO quality conversation covered. The boxing landscape has shifted. There are three major American promotional companies, no matter if Premier Boxing Champions pretends to be something else. For a long time, there were two. Golden Boy and Top Rank ruled American boxing for most of the 2000s until now. They also both worked heavily and occasionally exclusively with HBO.
With the arrival of PBC, there became three major promoters. PBC did a big number on Golden Boy by raiding their talent too, dramatically weakening De La Hoya’s company to an unofficial third place. PBC went on to work with Showtime instead of HBO. The final blow was Top Rank’s exit and their exclusive deal with ESPN. For now HBO has remained in the boxing business, but all they really have are a weakened Golden Boy and the smaller promoters with one or two major fighters.
Accordingly, we now get this sort of card on HBO. Jorge Linares (43-3, 27 KOs) is one of the two best lightweights in the world and an HBO fighter in any era. He is a three division world champion coming off a series of quality wins against British contenders Luke Campbell and Anthony Crolla. Campbell in particular is a former Olympic gold medalist and an excellent talent. Mercito Gesta (31-1-2, 17 KOs), unfortunately, is none of these things. He lost wide in his only title shot to Miguel Vasquez, for example. The Filipino’s resume also fails to feature any sort of marquee win.
Yet, with all that said, Jorge Linares has always been a strangely vulnerable elite fighter. Those days do seem to be behind him, but it is not like he has never fallen apart against a fighter perceived to be less than him. This is especially true if the Venezuelan cuts. Gesta might not be a world class fighter, but he is a competent professional. I don’t see him being competitive, but there is always this sort of “what if…” cloud hanging around Linares.
The co-main event is an even more exaggerated version of the card’s main bout. Lucas Matthysse (38-4, 35 KOs) was briefly the scariest man in boxing following his quick work over Lamont Peterson in 2013, but it didn’t last. He was competitive with but lost clearly to Danny Garcia. After a three fight winning streak that included a pair of good wins over John Molina Jr and Ruslan Provodnikov, Viktor Postol soundly outboxed and finished Matthysse. This is the Argentinian’s second fight back.
By the old standards, Lucas Matthysse is a borderline at best HBO fighter. He is an exciting power puncher at the very least. Tewa Kiram (38-0, 28 KOs), however, is a complete unknown. Kiram ended up in this fight to begin with thanks to the WBA and their stupid secondary, fake world titles. That is fine for Golden Boy to want for Matthysse, I guess, but for HBO to use it as a co-main event to an already questionable headline bout is what looks bad. Still, just because no one outside of possibly the WBA has seen Kiram fight doesn’t mean he can’t. I expect him to get rolled over here, but I suppose we won’t know until he is in the ring.
HBO will have the call at 10:30 PM Eastern on Saturday night. Box Nation has the fights in the UK.
