Jean-Thenistor Pascal vs. Michael Eifert

I'll definitely be putting eyes on it tomorrow, or, depending on whether it clashes with the class I'm teaching.

 

We are going remote due to inclement weather, seems... probably can get away with it. (this one's just a computer lit class for elderly immigrants learning to become cna's. today was paperwork and orientation in-person and it was a half-hour ordeal just everybody connecting to wifi, so figuring out zoom and signing into google may well last the geezers all morning)

As for Thursday's poopoo-voo main event, I think, eliminator or not, if Pascal doesn't look vintage he ought to misplace Beterbiev's number.

 

What's insane to me is, upon realizing this is a bona fide IBF eliminator, there is a nonzero chance this poor Eifert pup gets tossed in with Beterbiev. File under cruel & unusual.

I mean you know boxing, man - screwy crap happens on the semi-regular. Pascal ought to be defeat-proof here, but who knows. Flukes abound.

(and tbf it wasn't like they just plucked him from outside the rankings system or anything - he's the IBF number 5 light heavyweight! But still...)

 

Okay but like - as much as you'd revel in the schadenfreude of it all regarding JP, wouldn't part of you be a touch worried about the young kraut? Talk about pyrrhic victories...the upset on Thursday would guarantee him a chance to be murdered in front a global audience.

 

1-1 against Dzemski (a nobody fellow domestic prospect), and beyond that biggest W's coming against Adriano Sperandio and some other German with a padded zero named Nils Schmidt.

That all got him up to #5 in the world, but that isn't even the daffiest of it. Slots #1-2 are vacant, essentially meaning the IBF considers Eifert in fact Beterbiev's third best contender behind only #3 Pascal and #4 Joe Smith Jr.

Criminal negligence on their part, really, if something did happen.

I share your dismay at the state of the modern alphabets, even the IBF who are often considered the most guiltless or possessing the most favorable corruption to prestige ratio among the Big Four - but as you know rein up short of pining for their outright disassembly (being that I've not the skin in the game you do, as that goes). That's a whole lot of history and tradition just to flush, even as outrageously bad as things are now and have been. I'm more for sweeping policy reform, and incentivizing unification as much as possible.

 

Absolute clown-shoes... when you look at the rest of the IBF's top 15, you actually have some quasi-reasonable names. Far more so than Eifert, anyway.

https://www.ibf-usba-boxing.com/index.php/ratings/ibf-ratings?view=rankings

Maybe not the likes of Connor Wallace or Jerome Pampellone (who??) but certainly Anthony Yarde, Dan Azeez, Callum Smith, Joshua Buatsi and even Padraig McCrory and Fanlong Mèng have proven themselves well beyond anything this kid's done.

And we all know the "why" of it, no mystery there. None of the bigger names there have shelled out the sanctioning fees to vie for any of the IBF's rinky-dink stepping-stone titles. Guess who did, though? Eifert, Mèng, and the aforementioned obscure pair from down under...each on multiple occasions.

Pure grift.

Some days I really do get the urge to burn it all down.

 

ESPN+ in USA, poopoovoo elsewhere.