Former 2 division world champion Carl Frampton (23-1, 14 KOs) has split with his longtime manager Barry McGuigan, and his company Cyclone Promotions. It’s unclear what caused the 30-year-old Northern Ireland native Frampton to sever ties with McGuigan.
Frampton lost his last fight to Leo Santa Cruz on January 28 of this year in getting beaten by a 12 round majority decision. In Frampton’s fight before that, he won a controversial 1 round majority decision over Santa Cruz on July 30 last year in New York.
Frampton fought in front of a large pro-Frampton crowd. Some boxing fans felt that the judges were influenced by the cheering from the boxing fans at ringside. It did appear that Frampton lost the fight or should have lost. He got lucky with the scoring.
Frampton still hasn’t said whether he’ll keep Barry’s son, Shane McGuigan, as his trainer. That might make things uncomfortable between now that Barry is no longer the manager for Frampton. It’s still possible that they can work together. Shane is a good trainer, and he’s worked well with Frampton during the time they’ve been a team. Frampton’s adviser is Al Haymon. There’s no word whether that will change.
“I can confirm that I have parted company with Barry McGuigan and Cyclone Promotions,” Frampton said on his social media site. “I would like to thank Barry, the McGuigan family and Cyclone Promotions for our time together.”
Frampton is getting up there in age at 30, and that can be old for a small fighter like him. There’s no question that Frampton has not looked like the same fighter in his last 4 fights against Leo Santa Cruz (twice), Scott Quigg and Alejandro Gonzalez Jr. Quigg would have beaten Frampton if he’d started attacking him a lot earlier in the fight, but he was dealing with a broken jaw injury that he sustained in round 4. Even with the injury, Quigg rallied and dominated the entire second half of the fight. It was a total collapse from Frampton, who wilted under the pressure from Quigg.“Having taken time to consider my future and discussed it with those closest to me, (and) I am confident that now is the right time to move forward and take my career into my own hands,” said Frampton. “I still believe that I’m the best featherweight in the world and I promise my fans that I am continuing with my efforts to get my homecoming fight rescheduled in the very near future.”
I don’t know how Frampton can say that he’s the best fighter in the featherweight division after his last 2 fights against Santa Cruz. Those matches seemed to show clearly that Santa Cruz is the better guy. If both fights took place in Las Vegas, Santa Cruz would have won them in my opinion. Quigg has moved up in weight to featherweight, and I think he’ll beat Frampton when the two of them get around to fighting each other again.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see Frampton end up with Eddie Hearn and his Matchroom stable in the UK. That would be a smart move for Frampton. Hearn’s fighters are shown on Sky, and it would give Frampton a lot of visibility. Of course, none of that will matter if Frampton isn’t talented enough to win another world title. The weak link at 126 is clearly IBF champion Lee Selby.
Frampton needs to face Selby and take his title from him before someone else gets to him first. Quigg is ranked No.2 with the IBF, and I think he’d wipe the deck with Selby if that fight were to happen. It might be better for Frampton to wait until Quigg beats Selby so that he can fight him for the IBF title rather than Selby. That’s not a good fight. Selby can’t punch, and I don’t see him having a large fan base compared to Quigg.
Right now, I place Frampton in this position in the top featherweights in the division:
1. Leo Santa Cruz
2. Scott Quigg
3. Gary Russell Jr.
4. Oscar Valdez
5. Abner Mares
6. Joseph Diaz Jr.
7. Carl Frampton
8. Miguel Marriaga
9. Cristian Mijares
10. Lee Selby
Frampton is a good fighter, but he’s not in the right weight class for him. I think he’d be better off moving back down to super bantamweight where his size, power and boxing ability would give him an edge over most of the fighters in the weight class.
Frampton’s inactivity obviously isn’t a positive for his career. However, he was supposed to fight this summer on July 29 against the highly rated contender Andres Gutierrez, but he suffered an injury and the fight was canceled. That was bad news for Frampton, because he’s been out of the ring for the last 7 months.
With him looking bad in his last 4 fights, you have to wonder whether Frampton is on the downside of his boxing career. The late Gonzalez Jr. dropped Frampton twice in round 1 in what was supposed to be a showcase fight on July 18, 2015 in El Paso, Texas. Instead of Frampton shining in that fight in front of a lot of boxing fans that had never seen him before, he almost lost and he looked terrible. It’s doubtful that Frampton won over a lot of fans with that performance.
Frampton is good enough to beat Selby for the IBF strap. If Frampton can leap frog over Quigg to get the title shot against Selby before the end of the year, he’ll probably beat him without any problems. But that doesn’t mean that Frampton will be able to hold onto the title. Like I was saying, Quigg is ranked #2 by the International Boxing Federation, and it’s only a matter of time before the IBF makes him Frampton’s mandatory challenger if he wins that strap against Selby.
By beating Selby, Frampton will be inheriting a huge problem in needing to fight Quigg. It might be better for Frampton to give up the IBF title if he beats Selby. That way Frampton would be free to fight whoever he pleases, and not worry about fighting someone that could beat him potentially. I think Quigg would definitely defeat Frampton if the two of them were to fight each other again.
Frampton should think about getting a good dietician that can work on helping him get his weight down low enough for him to move back down to the super bantamweight division. That’s where Frampton needs to be. He can use his size to overpower most of the guys in the division. There would be a couple of fighters that might give Frampton problems like Guillermo Rigondeaux and Jessie Magdaleno. I think Frampton would beat most of the rest. WBC champion Rey Vargas would be a real handful for Frampton. That would be a 50-50 fight.
