What to do with the Super Six?
Following Mikkel Kessler’s surprise withdrawal from the Super Six World Boxing Classic there is now the conundrum of how to move the tournament forward.
It started off as a fantastic idea, in an era where big fights are near impossible to arrange, Lou DiBella and Showtime had set up a plethora of them under one umbrella. However the problem with having a boxing competition such as is havoc can be caused by either a temperamental fighter or a long-term injury.
The timescale for such an event is huge and the whole thing has hung precariously like a bird perched on a sleeping crocodile’s snout. The first bouts took place on October the 17th 2009 and it is predicted that the final will be some time in May or June 2011, so that’s basically three years, give or take, relying on nothing going wrong.
Most of the fighters involved were unbeaten, in their primes and knew that they were coming up against the best and the tournament would have a massive overall bearing on their careers. A few defeats and they are risking their reputations and everything they have worked for, if they felt that it wasn’t going to plan, such as Jermaine Taylor who quit or Carl Froch who looked like he might after his Kessler defeat, it could throw the competition into turmoil.
After Taylor put his career on hold, Allan Green was brought in perhaps more to do with who he knows than his ability. Sure “Ghost Dog” is a decent fighter but he is not in the class of the rest of the line-up, another fighter of Green’s stature coming in would really devalue a once fiercely competitive tournament.
Also there is the case of the league table. There is only one more fight remaining in the group stage and Kessler is in third place currently and holding a WBC title, so if you take away everything he has done in the tournament it ruins things and he can’t pass on his points as Green didn’t get Taylor’s. Another problem is if a fighter does come in with no points, with only one fight left it would be hard to qualify for the semis, thus bringing in another fighter might not be logistically possible.
Perhaps the sensible thing to do here then would be to pay off Green and go straight to the semi-finals, turn the Super Six into the Fantastic Four. It should cut short proceedings by about six months and keep the standard fierce. The boxers are probably likely to agree to it and the winner will no doubt fight Kessler anyway.
Failing that there are a number of pugilists that could come in. One name that might be interested is Kelly Pavlik. The American’s careers is in tatters following his loss to Sergio Martinez and he is set to reinvent himself as a super-middleweight, this could be a great chance for him to get back to business. However it would be about as tough way to come into a new weight class as there is and any more defeats could see his career all but over.
Lucian Bute is the best of the rest right now but the Romanian has an upcoming fight against Jesse Brinkley and might not want to cash in on his new-found position so soon by taking on the best in the division. He will probably hold back and pick one of them once the tournament is over.
If he wasn’t shocking the light-heavyweight division Jean Pascal would have been a fantastic option. The Canadian would have very much wanted to get revenge for his defeat over Carl Froch and it adds to the high quality rather than diminish the standard. Yet following his win over Chad Dawson Pascal will now surely concentrate on a big name light-heavyweight clash against someone such as Bernard Hopkins.
It’s a tricky move and of course there is the option of just ending the tournament. It started as a great idea and it would fantastic to see it replicated perhaps in the light-heavyweights and the light-welterweights, but if the calibre is not there it debases the whole tournament and the eventual winner will get all the “he only won it because Kessler quit” jibes levelled at them.
Without the “Great Dane” the Super Six is in trouble, but hopefully we will still discover who the wondrous one is in the end.
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