Hatton to fight Saul Alvarez at 150lbs For WBC Title!!!

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Good point.

 

I made this argument ad nauseum when I first came back onto the boards and it was laughed off or ignored.

Catch-weight is a fine concept- it is a tool used to make fights, make money, etc. No beef here. But when it becomes the norm, obviating and undermining the traditional weight classes- even the relatively newly introduced stuff....then I have to object.

Pacquaio and, to a lesser degree, Mayweather, have been the chief architects of this latest fad.

Abuses of bargaining power which are intended to physically weaken an opponent before a punch has even been thrown constitute, innately, an obvious undermining of the original premise on which the weight divisions, especially the new ones, were founded.

If the new weight divisions were made to increase safety, then how is that original premise upheld when bargaining power is being used to force fighters to come in at certain weights other than what they themselves prefer, within divisional limits?

Pacquaio forcing Cotto to make 145 should never have happened. It is not good enough for people to turn around and say "oh, nobody put a gun to Cottos head". Maybe they didn't, but they certainly waved a carrot under his nose which NO fighter would ever really be in a position to turn down.

Same with Mayweather and his $600,000 payment to Marquez. Oh, sorry Juan, I can't make 147, here is another half-mill, what do you say I just kick the shit out of you?

 

DLH-Hopkins pre-dates Pacquiao doing it. DLH fought Forbes at a catchweight before he fought Pac at 147 (after which came Pac-Cotto/Margarito).

Problem for DLH was he picked a middleweight that could actually make the invented weight and still knock him out....and then found himself on the opposite side of things by failing to realize he doesn't keep himself in the same kind of condition Hopkins does and couldn't make the division Pacquiao prescribed and then got his ass kicked (actually he was so badly prepared to do it he overshot the weight by two pounds)...and went on to make himself look like a hypocrite by criticizing other fighters for doing it.

 

The critical element here is an abuse of bargaining power which forces the weaker party to submit to weight-making which physically depletes them.

I don't think Hopkins-Oscar is a good example of that abuse of power. For openers, that fight had a large element of self-indulgence and fraud, right across the board.

What I am focusing on is the unfairness of a catchweight towards another fighter, not the actual catchweights themselves.

Furthermore, its a joke when you have catchweights for this title, that title, and the other title.

If a fight is for a title, then both fighters should have the option of weighing the divisional limit for that fight.

No fighter has the right to decide that a shot at the WW title should be made for 145lbs, knowing that {a} his opponent is sufficiently impecunious so as to be forced to go along with it and {b} knowing that this will weaken his opponent for that fight.

This sort of thing makes a mockery of the divisional limits.

For what it is worth- I have no time for Oscar or Bernard. One is a cheat and a liar and a thug and the other had bad teeth.

 

I agree with the criticism of using weights as a bargaining tool, but then you also had a fighter like Mosley willingly say he'd fight Pacquaio at an even lower number than Cotto did.

Frankly, I would have liked to see Cotto say no to anything below 147 and some of the blame for him not falls on him.

 

How willing can a 39 year old man, with Balco and a messy divorce behind him, be said to be when he looks around and agrees to take a fight at a weight he hasn't made for years? {sub 145}

I'm not saying they didn't sign the contract with a fat smile on their faces....in fact a lot of them would have been happy to do it...they just would have been that bit happier doing it at 147.

It's all gone a bit convenient...too few fighters, or their people, are calling too many shots.

It now seems we could have, conceivably, a killer of a fighter at 147 but would never get a crack at a Pac or a Floyd unless he agreed to be fucked over both on money and on the weight.

They used to just rob fighters financially now it is cutting both ways.

 

Pacquiao-Mosley is at 147 as far as I've read...I'm talking about Mosley's comments where he was going around saying he'd fight him at 140 or whatever it was.

 

I stand corrected, then. I agree, that is total bullshit.

 

Im going to this fight :Thumbs:

 

Is this one on PPV? i.e, primetime?

 

It's HBO in the States. Might be on network tv in Mexico.

 

If he wins this fight Alvarez has his sights set low, very low...guess he's still not anxious to fight a lot of 154-pounders.

http://www.fightnews.com/Boxing/canelo-targets-jm-marquez-76476

 

Even if that doesn't happen (and I hope to God it doesn't) you can best believe that G will take baby steps for as long as HBO allows/will invest in his future.

And going back to the Pac-Marquez thing, this is why the worst thing that Marquez' handlers could've done was create a media campaign to land that fight. Mosley, Berto and now Alvarez have called him out, and it's hard for anyone in the "Pac should've fought Marquez again" camp to offer any backlash whatsoever.

 

That's got to be the lamest thing I've heard in a while.

Canelo is shit.

 

I disagree about the Marquez/Pacquiao media campaign. I don't think it matters. Especially when fans considered and still consider JMM a better oponent than Mosley.

Arum gave different reasons why he wouldn't give JMM the fight a few months ago. Naming the weight claiming JMM wouldnt' be good at 147, or over pricing himself. Saying that Mosley was also a bigger draw.

The moment JMM started leaving Goldenboy now Arum is saying that after Floyd he is the leading candidate to land pacquiao. :dunno:

at the end of the day Not being with Golden Boy is your ticket to land Pacquiao.

 

does top rank still have to give golden boy a percentage of pacquiao's fight revenue? i know that figure increased against gbp foes