By Norm Frauenheim-
It didn’t exactly resemble the NFL’s release of its annual schedule. Then again, nothing remotely resembles boxing.
Still, Showtime tried to put some order onto the sport’s trademark chaos Wednesday with an orderly news conference full of dates, hopes and fighters dressed like first-round draft picks.
On one level, it worked. It offered a plan and expectations with a calendar-like reliability about what should happen.
From this corner, the best of the promised dates is a featherweight rematch, Leo Santa Cruz against a re-energized Abner Mares on June 9 at Los Angeles’ Staples Center, the setting for the first one — a dramatic Santa Cruz victory by majority decision in 2015.
On another level, Showtime’s announcement was familiar. Remember, this is boxing, meaning the sort of intrigue that is an uncomfortable mix of anticipation and concern.
To wit: Deontay Wilder-Luis Ortiz on March 3 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It’s a key test for Wilder’s heavyweight aspirations and a pivotal step toward a potential blockbuster – Wilder-Anthony Joshua. The worry is that it will never happen because of Ortiz’ PED history. Ortiz was forced to withdraw from a Nov. 4 bout because of a positive test. Instead, Wilder beat an out-of-shape stand-in, Bermane Stiverne. Wilder frets he’ll never see Ortiz in the ring because of another positive test. He should worry. Showtime should, too.
The network’s calendar of nine cards runs through June and opens on Feb. 17 with Phoenix super-middleweight champion David Benavidez in a rematch against Ronald Gavril on Feb. 17 in Las Vegas.
It’s something of a blueprint, something to build on. That means it’s incomplete, in part by design, yet also because of the chaos that is always there.
Despite anticipation for Santa Cruz-Mares and the unsettled intrigue surrounding Wilder-Ortiz, there are doubts about a potential fight that has had everybody buzzing in the days since welterweight Errol Spence Jr. put himself squarely in the middle of the pound-for-pound debate with a stoppage of Lamont Peterson.
There’s a lot of talk that Spence is already the world’s best. Not sure about that one. I’d still like to see him in another big bout before putting him ahead of Terence Crawford, Vasiliy Lomachenko and Mike Garcia. But after Saturday his name has to be included in any current pound-for-pound debate.
Forcing Peterson to quit after the seventh round was a display of Spence’s dynamic skillset, yet the victory was hard to judge because of everything Peterson lacked.
Spence, it seems, is one fight away from proving he should be No. 1 in the pound-for-pound debate. A fight against Keith Thurman.
For now, however, it looks as if he might denied that opportunity in a fight later this year. Thurman told reporters Wednesday at the Showtime news conference in New York that it wouldn’t happen in 2018.
On the Showtime schedule, Thurman is scheduled to fight May 19 in his first bout since undergoing elbow surgery last year. For now, there’s only TBA next to Thurman’s name for that date. To Be Announced is not on anybody’s list of contenders. For Thurman, however, it’s a reasonable way to test that elbow.
But then what? Another TBA? Thurman called 2018 “a get-back year’’ Wednesday. If he looks good on May 19, however, there figures to be calls for him to re-consider a late-year showdown with Spence, who has a June 16 date somewhere in hometown Dallas, perhaps in a mandatory title defense against Mexican Carlos Ocampo.
Spence said he is wiling to give Thurman “a pass” in his first bout this year. But it’s not clear if that pass will still be there 10 months from now.
Trouble is, Spence is on the fast-track to stardom. Already, there’s talk about opportunities for him at 154 pounds, which would allow to move up the scale and into a division that Floyd Mayweather Jr. also dominated.
Thurman is understandably careful. He’s been battling injuries. He hurt a shoulder while training in 2014. He hurt his neck in an auto accident in 2016. He will have been idle for more than a year when he finally returns in May.
He’s right. He needs time. If Thurman takes too much of it to get back, however, Spence might be long gone.
