This is disappointing all around.
Premier Boxing Champions is rumored to be ending 2018 and starting 2019 by getting into the PPV space once in each of December, January, and February. January reportedly will bring Manny Pacquiao versus Adrien Broner while February is the target for the pound for pound showdown between Mikey Garcia and Errol Spence Jr. Those are tentative as of now still, however. What is booked for certain is December 1st’s Showtime PPV heavyweight title fight between WBC titleholder Deontay Wilder and lineal champion Tyson Fury. We now have the undercard for the show too, for better or worse.
Unified two belt junior middleweight titleholder Jarrett Hurd (22-0, 15 KOs) will reportedly get the co-main event spot. That half of the fight is great, but Jason Welborn (24-6, 7 KOs) is a downright terrible opponent. While the British fighter has recently won the British title at middleweight, his resume offers nothing but alarm bells in regards to fighting a machine like Hurd. Hell, in 2016 he lost to a 18-96-8 record building opponent in a six round decision. To be fair Hurd is returning for the first time since shoulder surgery and will naturally be looking for a softer touch to test the repaired shoulder, but this is next level softness. Quite frankly, it is a waste of everyone’s time involved.
As reported here previously, heavyweight contender Luis Ortiz will also be in action on the undercard against Travis Kaufman. That’s not a whole lot better.
Rounding the thoroughly poor undercard out will be non-traditional British heavyweight prospect and Olympic silver medalist Joe Joyce (6-0, 6 KOs) reportedly in against American unknown Joe Hanks (23-2, 15 KOs). There have been conflicting reports about his opponents, but Hanks is what RingTV is reporting. As for Joyce himself, in theory the 33 year old former amateur standout is on the fast track to world contention given his limited time left as a top athlete. This fight doesn’t represent that though. Not if he is in against Hanks. Still, Joyce is an exciting, pressure forward big man who probably should have won gold over France’s Tony Yoka but controversially didn’t get the decision. He’s definitely worth knowing and I’m glad he’ll get his first major American exposure here, but this too is a poor use of the slot on the major PPV.
All in all, there is next to nothing to like here. Jarrett Hurd, Luis Ortiz, and Joe Joyce are all half of good fights, but the other half to the recipe is missing three time’s over on this show. Hopefully they have a plan for when all three of these end early. They probably will. This is terrible undercard that won’t sell one PPV buy on its own. I really hope this isn’t the PBC organized PPV standard going forward.
