John Molina Jr. (29-6, 23 KOs) has his work cut out for him this Saturday night when he challenges undefeated WBC/WBO light welterweight champion Terence “Bud” Crawford (29-0, 20 KOs) for his two titles plus his Ring title on HBO Championship Boxing on December 10 at the CenturyLink Arena in Omaha, Nebraska.
This is going to be a tough match for the 33-year-old Molina Jr., because he’s had a lot of bad luck inside the ring in the last four years in losing five out of his last ten fights. It’s unknown why the sanctioning bodies are still ranking Molina Jr. so highly given all of his many defeats.
Losing 5 out of his last 10 fights sound bad, but what’s really bad about it is the fact that Molina has lost 3 out of his last 5 fights. That’s bad news for boxing fans, who are hoping to see a good fight this Saturday night in the Crawford-Molina fight. You can hope that Molina fights at a high level like he did in his last fight against Ruslan Provodnikov, when he pulled off a surprising upset in defeating the former WBO 140lb champion by a 12 round unanimous decision.
You can say that the Molina-Provodnikov fight results were more about timing than anything special that Molina did. He caught Provodnikov not long after he’d taken a really bad beating in his loss to Lucas Matthysse in 2015. If you saw how Molina looked in losing to Humberto Soto in 2014 and Adrien Broner in 2015, you have to wonder what HBO is thinking of when they decided to let Crawford vs. Molina make it on their network for December 10.
This decision will either work on in HBO’s favor with the fight being an exciting one from start to finish while bringing in big ratings, or this could be a read dud with Crawford easily winning a dull one-sided fight with poor ratings.
On paper, Crawford vs. Molina is not one that will draw a lot of fans from the arguably more appealing fights that are taking place on the same night. Molina Jr. is a good B-level fighter who you can count on to defeat fighters like Provodnikov. Never the less, Molina isn’t the type of guy you can throw into the ring with a defensive counter puncher like Crawford, who likes to punish his opponents with counter shots each time they throw anything, and expect it to be a good fight.
Hopefully, Molina doesn’t freeze up and not throw punches like he did in his fight against Adrien Broner last year. That was an ugly fight to watch. Molina Jr. didn’t try anything. he seemed like he wasn’t mentally there on that night. If he does the same thing against Crawford on Saturday night, then the boxing fans are going to be in for a dreadful fight. You can bet that the viewers will be changing channels quickly, and HBO will be wondering they ever blessed this mismatch.
It’s good for Crawford and his promoters at Top Rank to have easy fights, because it makes Crawford look better. But it’s not good for the fans, because they see a poor fight that should have never made it on television. Crawford should be fighting guys tare winning their fights, not losing 3 out of their last 4 fights coming into the match like Molina. I don’t care who you are. Losing 3 out of your las 4 fights is not a good record for someone fighting for a world title.
There’s going to be a lot of competition for the Crawford-Molina fight on Saturday night, because there’s a great card on Showtime Boxing at the same time with featherweight champion Jesus Cuellar facing former three division world champion Abner Mares, and IBF junior middleweight champion Jermall Charlo defending his title against unbeaten Julian “J-Rock” Williams.
A little earlier on Saturday night, IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua will be defending his title against American Eric Molina on Showtime starting at 5:30 p.m. ET/2:20 p.m. PT. Also on Saturday night is former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fighting Dominik Britsch on Bein Sports Espanol. That should be a good fight to see if Chavez Jr. has anything left after being out of the ring for an extended period of time – again.
Molina said this to IFL TV about his fight against Crawford on HBO:
“We’re going to give the fans a hell of a fight on December 10,” said Molina about his fight against Crawford. “I don’t think it’s a style issue. It’s a heart and will issue. That’s the difference. Terence is undefeated for a good reason, and he’s highly talented for a good reason. He’s the goods, and we’re in the business to beat the goods. I have a lot of elements to my game, and I plan on unveiling them on December 10th. You fight every fight every fight different. I am not going to Omaha to lose, that’s for sure. I’ve got to be myself, and do what I have to do to win. You may have people writing off this fight, but you’re going to have people that really know boxing who are going to say ‘that’s the fight I want to watch. I’ve been an underdog my whole career. It doesn’t bother me, man. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing past December 10th. You’re not going to want to miss this fight with me and Terence Crawford,” said Molina.
