Bob Arum has had choice words for anyone beating the drum for an immediate matchup between Lopez and Gamboa (“I know what people want and they can go [expletive] themselves”).  Seems he wants to let this one simmer a while, because he sees potential blockbuster business between these two if they continue to win impressively.

The problem is, last time I checked these guys were still featherweights.  It seems to me that there is a limit to how big (figuratively) these guys are going to get without fighting each other.  We know featherweights can become stars – but Marco Antonio Barrera, Erik Morales and Manny Pacquiao didn’t become household names until they started fighting each other.

The fact is, while both guys have plenty of personality, they aren’t in the same stratosphere as a Prince Naseem Hamed (the last little man to “get there” without a dance partner) in the flamboyance department.  Neither of them even speak English.   Is the general public going to stand up and take notice as Lopez and Gamboa knock out rated fighters like Cristobal Cruz, Mario Santiago and Martin Honorio?  How many people who watched Saturday night’s card on HBO could even pick those guys out of a line-up?

On the other hand, we’ve seen how great rivalries elevated the likes of Pacquiao, Barrera, Morales, Juan Manuel Marquez, Israel Vasquez and Rafael Marquez at this weight.  The stock for every one of those guys skyrocketed in losing efforts, much more so than it would have by dispatching unknown mandatory challengers.  Why not go with what works?

Juan Manuel Lopez and Yuriorkis Gamboa both took care of business in easier than expected fashion Saturday night.  I agree with everyone that Gamboa was more spectacular in dispatching tough Rogers Mtagwa in two, but I found Lopez’ seventh round stoppage of Steven Luevano far more impressive. 

Luevano is a solid “B” featherweight who had managed five title defenses at that weight, and Lopez was coming up in weight to meet him.  Gamboa, a featherweight or super featherweight his entire career, was fighting a super bantamweight.  I’d say a “blown-up super bantamweight,”  but the fact of the matter is that Mtagwa didn’t even blow up, weighing in at 122.5, practically the super bantam limit.

The 1980s had Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns.  The 2000s gave us Erik Morales, Marco Antonio Barrera, Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez.

In the the 1990s, politics and a lack of personal discipline deprived us of Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson.

I’m talking about boxing “round robins.”  Not the contrived (but wonderful) Showtime “Super Six.”  I’m talking about the rare moments of boxing heaven, when the stars align – again and again.  And by stars, I mean “stars.”  Leonard, Hagler and company led the charge in boxing’s last golden age in the 1980s, captivating not just boxing fans but the whole sporting world, facing each other in various combinations to produce no end of fireworks, drama and controversy.

In the 2000s, with boxing at it’s low point in modern history (in no small part to the stupid squandering of a potentially epic heavyweight round robin of bouts in the 1990s), it was the “featherweight four” that gave hard-core boxing fans a reason to stick around, and kept us reminded of what a wonderful sport boxing can be.

Middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik

But such magical series have been all too infrequent in the modern era.  Timid fighters, contentious promoters and dueling television networks all conspire to scuttle such moments before they start.  Imagine for a moment what would have been possible just a few years ago, with Antonio Margarito, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Paul Williams and Miguel Cotto seemingly circling each other endlessly.  The two fights we squeezed out of that crowd (Margarito-Cotto and Williams-Margarito) gave us just the smallest taste of what could have been.

It seems to me that we are on the verge of a classic round robin, if somebody doesn’t step in to mess it up.  It now looks like middleweight champ Kelly Pavlik is eyeing Sergio Martinez as his next opponent, and the next step toward making a potentially wonderful series of fights between Pavlik, Martinez and Paul Williams.

Martinez and Williams already put the bow on 2009 with a competitive, controversial fight of the year candidate, in a match-up which had most people anticipating a stink-fest.  To further cement the three fighters together before this thing even gets started, Martinez was a late substitute, stepping in for an ill Pavlik. 

Three-division terror Paul Williams

If you think about it, it only makes sense.  You could make a case for all three of these guys being among the 15 or so best fighters in the game.  All three of them are among the most fearless fighters out there, with no hesitation to take on the biggest challenges.

Perhaps most importantly, they have nobody else to fight.  All three guys have uniquely difficult styles (even without considering that Martinez and Williams are southpaws), and have had no end of difficulty finding opponents.

In addition, none of the three, despite being excellent and entertaining fighters, is a draw on their own.  Many potential round robins were sidelined by the fact that the fighters didn’t HAVE to fight their best peers to cash huge paychecks.  Not the case here – in a barren middleweight division (Williams and Martinez are new arrivals to the division after all), they’ve got nobody but each other.  There’s nothing to stop these fighters from spending the next few years fighting each other two or three times each.  And history tells us that if that happens, at least one of them is likely to emerge as a true star.

Argentine spoiler Sergio Martinez

Keep an eye out, folks.  We could be on the cusp of something very special.  Now all we need is a fourth…

One unfortunate thing about the now-cancelled Mosley-Berto card were the fact that several intriguing undercard fights were going untelevised (at least in the U.S.).  Hopefully these fights can now find a home somewhere on TV, and not just go away:

Glen Johnson vs. Yusef Mack

Lucas Matthysse vs. Vivian Harris

Eloy Perez vs. David Rodela

Plus, Sergio Mora in a comeback fight against Jason Naugler.

Andre Berto’s withdrawal from his Jan. 30th fight with Shane Mosley is about to put Floyd Mayweather, Jr. in the “put up or shut up” position his detractors have been pushing him toward for years.

While most casual sports fans seem to blame the implosion of the Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao superfight on the Pac Man (sports fans are now conditioned to assume steroid abuse until proven otherwise), hard-core boxing opinion has been much tougher on Mayweather.  He’s been accused alternately of making unreasonable demands far outside the norm, to purposely inserting the blood testing as a “land mine” to blow up a fight he never intended on taking.

Unfair? Maybe, but past is prologue, and Mayweather’s recent record of avoiding top welterweights speaks for itself.However, with Mosley now without a spring dance partner and Mayweather supposedly looking high and low for a worthy opponent, it’s going to be hard for Money May to wriggle out of this one. 

Either Mayweather takes on Mosley, a consensus top-3 welter, and his detractors (at least the reasonable ones) have to cut him some slack.  Or he finds a way out of this one too, and forever confirms what he’s been accused of – protected his “zero” at all costs, and at the expense of competition.

Of course, it will be interesting to see what kind of drug testing demands Floyd makes of Mosley, considering that Shane, unlike Pac, is a confirmed user of PEDs.  Quite an interesting PR tightrope for Floyd to walk here…

That being said, I have a feeling Shane Mosley will agree to having ALL his blood drawn, twice a day, if that’s what it takes to get him this fight.

So, the biggest news for me this weekend was the debut of Top Rank Live on Fox Sports on Saturday night.  Color me cautiously impressed. 

Cautiously because of the way Top Rank stuck it in sideways to Versus the last time the promoter signed an exclusive deal to provide boxing programming to a basic cable network.  Versus ponied up big bucks (a quarter of a million per card), and ended up with a series of “has been”s, ”never were”s, and some of the world’s most boring fighters (Yuri Foreman, Anthony Thompson).

That series will probably be best remembered for force-feeding America the phenomenon known as Tye Fields, the atrocious heavyweight giant who fought (headlined!) multiple times on Versus before being mercifully removed from center stage by the pedestrian Monte Barrett.

Believe it or not, this is one punch Fields managed to get up from. Despite his chin, he was up from this shot at the count of seven.

Optimistic, because frankly this main event was superior to just about anything that appeared on Versus under the Top Rank banner.  It was a fight with the outcome in doubt going in, and with significant repurcussions for the participants.  Vanes Martirosyan took on well-known former titlist Kassim Ouma in a crossroads fight, and got everything he could handle (and more) before escaping with a controversial decision.  Best of all, it was a good fight.

Before we get too excited, remember the strikingly similar match-up Top Rank kicked off their Versus series with – a prospect thought to be on the verge of a title shot (Kelly Pavlik) taking on a respected for fading former champ (Bronco McKart).  To be fair, unlike Martirosyan – Ouma, nobody expected that fight to be competitive (and it wasn’t).

Maybe putting “Top Rank” right in the name of the show (as ESPN did many years ago – successfully) helps.  After all, this way if the promoter serves up pure garbage, it will at least have to deal with the smell.