A weary Christian Mijares kicks back in his hotel room late Tuesday after arriving in Los Angeles from Mexico. It had been a long couple of days and nights for the WBC/WBA 115-pound champion, who faces his IBF counterpart, Vic Darchinyan, in a highly anticipated world title unification fight this Saturday, Nov. 1, at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., on SHOWTIME (9 p.m. ET/PT, delayed on the west coast). The previous 36-48 hours for Mijares included a Mexico City airport press conference during his layover from Gomez Palacio, Durango, Mexico, a late arrival to Los Angeles International Airport (1 a.m. Tuesday) and an early visit to the doctor to complete the necessary medical exams. http://fightbeat.com/news_details.php?NW=21912
Not much talk about this fight yet. In fact, there's not much talk about any of the fights this weekend. I guess Saturday will be another slow fight night on the forum.
I tend to doubt there'll be a lot of people watching to see if it happens...let alone on-line to write about it. According to Steve Kim, there might not be many people at the fight, either..."I hear ticket sales for both Arum's show and Mijares-Darchinyan at the Home Depot Center are abysmal. Will there be any walk-up sales for these two events?..." Meanwhile, Dzinziruk-Julio/Sturm-Sylvester hasn't gotten any talk.
It's sad, because both shows are actually pretty decent. the only drawback to the Chavez/Vanda card is that it's PPV. But if you mentally commit to buying it, then it should provide sufficient entertainment. What's a greater shame is that so little attention is being paid to Mijares-Vic, a fight where if/when Mijares wins, it'll be tough to argue against his chances of being Fighter of the Year.
Also, all of the fights mentioned in this thread (with the exception of Dzinziruk-Julio) have been previewed on Boxingscene - and that's BEFORE Cliff's weekly (Thursday) feature. But you gotta love the irony - the Internet side chastises the mainstream media for turning its back on the sport, yet most sites take the same elitist attitude when it comes to providing sufficient coverage.
Yeah, Mijares has been slept on the entire year. At least he'll get some attention out of this being a Showtime main event. He has to be one of the FOTY favorites with Margarito taking the rest of the year off...though I have a feeling Calzaghe will get a lot of talk for it if he beats Jones. I'm not sure what to expect out of the ppv card. I'm not nearly as down on JCC Jr. as many are, but I understand the ppv backlash. It's too bad Margarito couldn't have made the card more ppv-worthy. The biggest disappointment for me when I look at the two cards is what's happened to the career of Donaire since he beat Darchinyan. That's pretty well illustrated by this weekend's line-up.
