2014 Upset of the Year

Derek Edwards KO1 Badou Jack? :think

 

See, that's a grey area.

In terms of sheer numbers, yeah, most wrote Algieri off.

...but among those who actually had watched him numerous times and plotted out his progress from regional to national level before taking his big step up - guys like, for instance, yourself and myself - the % of us cautioning that Algieri could very well outbox Provodnikov even with some hairy moments was quite a bit higher. So I'm not sure whether uninformed opinions (held by the majority, who just looked at Boxrec and the fact that Algieri was untested) should really factor in. :think

 

It was absolutely not the same.

Maidana was a known quantity in boxing long before anyone even knew who Broner was. Diehards following the int'l scene knew him from the Kotelnik loss, but even the mainstream American TV audience knew him as of the clash with Ortiz in an HBO WCB main event in 2009. Broner fought on that same card, non-televised. He didn't make his TV debut until two years later, on the undercard of Saul Alvarez vs. Matthew Hatton, against Daniel Ponce De Leon. By then Maidana was a fixture already, having made three defenses of his interim WBA strap picked up when he made Ortiz quit and then challenging Amir Khan for the full title in a loss...and he was set to face all time great Erik Morales just a few weeks after Broner vs. Ponce De Leon.

Now, from 2011 until 2013 his star did rise pretty rapidly, but he was still a couple of years behind Maidana in the boxing public consciousness.




By contrast, Provodnikov's face was very familiar even before he broke into the big time with his game effort versus Bradley. By then he already had logged several nationally televised FNF appearances (which is about the level everybody thought he would remain, hence the overrating that began when he gave Bradley unexpected trouble).

Algieri had only just made his national TV debut in his previous effort, against Taylor (himself only marginally well known, at FNF level).


As of last Christmas there was nobody that knew of Broner and not of Maidana. Not one soul in the universe. Nor was Maidana considered unworthy of being in the ring with someone like Broner. Even if the majority picked Broner, nobody thought he was on a different level from Maidana, a longtime consistently world class operator (and one that had been improving ever since his first championship run, at that)

As of this June, nearly every boxing fan in the world knew who Provodnikov was - and maybe 3% of them had ever seen Algieri in action.


Huge difference.