“Saturday night, at the Forum in Inglewood, California, super flyweights Srisaket Sor Rungvisai and Juan Francisco Estrada gave HBO subscribers still forking over premium dollars for a mostly derelict product reason to temper their buyer’s remorse. Sor Rungvisai won a majority decision, proving once more that, however loose his grip on it, the division is his; Estrada, incredulous at the result, should ready himself for a rematch as daunting and winnable as its predecessor. HBO should encourage that rematch be scheduled immediately lest its promise be forgotten—taking a reason to maintain an HBO subscription along with it.”

Read The Pygmy Elephant in the Room on 15Rounds.com.

So ended what was always going to be an easy first defense for a fighter who wanted anything but. Fights of the magnitude Spence desires (and is there any reason to doubt him?) require the type of opponents PBC practices have long discouraged such opponents from taking. Eight months have passed since Spence travelled to Sheffield and made a repeat capitulant of Kell Brook. That may be an acceptable amount of time to secure a unification fight, something at least with a whiff of intrigue, but it is months too long a wait for a conclusion both arbitrary and foregone. Peterson has a name, yes, is endearing in both style and character, but had done nothing in his career to suggest he might trouble if not the best welterweight on the planet, the best threat to the bearer of that distinction. One fight in two years is hardly sound preparation for such a challenge.

Read Spence Rolls in the Waiting Game on 15Rounds.com.

“He was the opponent that night in March, if not quite in the derogatory sense, where matchmaking calculus eliminates a fighter’s prospects in advance, then at least in terms of billing. He was supposed to fall, by knockout ideally, to play his role in a narrative no less true for it being dressed in the bombast of a network’s company men. But he left the ring a champion.”

Read The Regicide: On Srisaket Sor Rungvisai on 15Rounds.com