This weekend is a pretty big one for fans of the sport in the United Kingdom. Carl Frampton fights at home in Northern Ireland against a pretty big name in Nonito Donaire while Amir Khan returns for a layoff ending tuneup in Liverpool. Surprisingly for American fight fans, both of these cards also feature legal streams stateside.
I have a question. When is the last time Carl Frampton (24-1, 14 KOs) looked really good in a fight? That was a soft ball, I know. The answer is that he looked good in July of 2016 when he came stateside and dethroned Leo Santa Cruz. I ask this for the follow up point though. That was really the only time in his last five fights that Carl Frampton looked like a really good fighter in the ring.
Two fights before the Santa Cruz win, Frampton had to get off the canvas twice to beat an opponent in Alejandro Gonzalez that was supposed to be overmatched bell to bell. Next was his now infamous fight with Scott Quigg in which there wasn’t much fighting at all. Quigg started so late in that fight that the decision is fine, but no one could come away saying Carl Frampton looked good there. He followed that up with the Santa Cruz win, but then did not adjust well to Leo’s smarter tactics in the rematch. I didn’t think that fight was all that close despite the cards. Then, most recently in November, Frampton certainly didn’t look good against late replacement tuneup Horacio Garcia.
My point here is that Carl Frampton really needs to look good against Nonito Donaire (38-4, 24 KOs). As a flyweight, the Filipino Flash was absolutely untouchable. That was ten years and almost fourteen pounds ago though. As Donaire moved up in weight throughout his career, he really started to hit a wall at 122 lbs. Nonito could certainly still fight well at super bantamweight, but the unquestioned dominance was gone when Guillermo Rigondeaux gave him his first defeat. Unfortunately, Donaire moved up again to featherweight in response and was thrashed by Nicholas Walters not too long after.
Featherweight is too big for Nonito Donaire. He acknowledged this by dropping back to 122, but a competitive loss to titleholder Jessie Magdaleno for some reason drove him back up to the weight. Now Carl Frampton is certainly not a big featherweight, yet it is definitely to his advantage that the fight is taking place at 126 lbs. It is also to his advantage that Donaire is now 35 years old. Even down at a more suitable super bantamweight, Donaire has been strongly tested by lesser talented fighters like Cesar Juarez in recent years.
There is every reason to think Carl Frampton should win this fight at this point in the two men’s careers. He has every advantage. That isn’t to say Donaire is a pushover or shot by any means, but he is old and at too high of a weight. Yet, I also have some concerns that maybe Frampton has ridden one great night against Leo Santa Cruz a little too highly into the respect spectrum of the sport, its media, and fans. If he struggles here, I do really think it is time to question just how good Carl Frampton is in 2018.
Showtime will be streaming this fight for us on both their Facebook and Youtube pages at 5:15 PM Eastern. Box Nation has the full card in the UK beginning at 2:30.
I don’t feel I need to say as much about Amir Khan (31-4, 19 KOs) versus Canada’s Phil Lo Greco (28-3, 15 KOs). Khan has been in big fight mode or bust for some time, but signing with British power promoter Eddie Hearn has course corrected that attitude for the time being. A fight against a regional kind of guy like Lo Greco makes sense after a two year layoff. This is especially true if the two years of inactivity started with a highlight reel one punch knockout loss to Canelo Alvarez. In response, this bout with Lo Greco is a mismatch that Khan will be able to style in.
Yeah, sure, the right punch can definitely knock out Amir Khan. His chin is fragile and we are past the point where anyone can really argue against that clear fact. It just isn’t going to happen here. Amir’s defense can be leaky, but Phil Lo Greco has been recently outboxed by guys who don’t have a fraction of the level of skill or athleticism that Khan possesses. All that is going to happen here is that Amir is going to look very sharp amongst lots of talk about a junior middleweight showdown with Kell Brook later in the year. If we have to sit through this fight to get to that one, so be it.
This fight is being streamed stateside by ESPN’s new streaming service, ESPN+. Top Rank will be both providing in house fights and signing the rights to international broadcasts for the service and they have snatched up this Matchroom card. The service costs $5 per month and is promising eighteen cards a year for boxing fans plus access to Top Rank’s video archives and a “regular studio show” covering the sport. They are even showing the entire British card starting at 2 PM Eastern, or you can tune into the main event at 5:15 if you’d prefer. Sky has the card in the UK. Yes, unfortunately these two main events are set to go directly head to head.
