“Still, at a time when the PBC has lost nearly all of its own momentum, when its own trajectory points to a future hardly long enough to do more than fatten another tick, Mares-Santa Cruz is a welcome change from the typical: it is a fight with real stakes. Although it is difficult to see either man suffer financially should he lose on Saturday—Haymon clients will still be overcompensated as “Master Al” spends frivolously the money of others—neither man can afford a defeat. With a loss, Mares will be considered a fighter who lost his nerve permanently with the first stoppage he suffered; a fighter who, despite a stretch of competition that even Carl Froch might not look down his crooked nose at, never really got off the canvas the night Gonzalez unmade him.”
Read After the Stall: Leo Santa Cruz-Abner Mares Preview on The Cruelest Sport.
In Between Rounds 