Jesús "El Renuente" Soto Karass

A week from Thursday will mark the 11-year anniversary of my first time seeing him in action:
https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/soto-karass-vs-buendia-right-now.28968/

Amazingly, that was, at least numerically (if not quite also chronologically) speaking, already halfway into his pro career. He fought Buendia with 23 contests under his belt over a six year period from his 2001 debut - and I've been privileged to have observed, beginning with Buendia, the subsequent 23 of his contests. A long journey, with many ups & downs, watching a fighter my own age (he's exactly two weeks older than me; we both celebrated our 36th birthdays last month) grow into and then fizzle out from his prime.

Before we reach that nostalgic milestone, however, on Thursday of this week, Golden Boy Promotions is unscrupulously feeding the proud battle-scarred warrior to unbeaten prospect Neeco "The Rooster" Macias...who is the same age today as was Soto Karass all those years ago versus Juan Manuel Buendia. This despite JSK having been fruitless in his campaign without a single official victory in more than five years; he's on an official 0-5-1 skid, and the draw in the first Yoshi Kamegai encounter was a gift decision.

This is the sort of barbaric and cannibalistic matchmaking that makes it sometimes hard to keep liking this sport anymore. If he wants to keep slugging away until he makes the decision to hang them up, hey - more power to JSK. He shouldn't be thrown in with a Macias until at least getting himself back on the scoreboard, crushing a tomato can or two and then preferably defeating a top 50 ranked light middleweight at least to prove he can still hang and isn't going to be massacred by a guy he well might've beaten a decade ago.

 

I don't care how excited people are over Macias, you can't be okay with this.

I hope Soto Karass rips the kid's goddamn face off, just to sow a little chaos and teach GBP a moral lesson. (even if derailing the Rooster isn't enough of a disruption to really affect their bottom line in the big picture)

 

@CST80

 

Yeah, no kidding. And people will just shrug it off and say "hey, kudos to Macias for taking such a big step up in class! JSK has been in with some huge names!"

Yeah, but when is the last time he beat one?

A: July 2013, and it was Andre freaking Berto, and JSK entered a 4/1 underdog coming in 3-5 in his previous eight bouts. He is 2-10-1-1 in his last fourteen. Like, yes, he was competitive with some world class guys in some of those losses - but it has been a long ass time since he was even doing that.

 

Say it with me, folks:

REN-U-EN-TE BOMAYE!!!!

 

Guessing you are not a native speaker of Spanish then? Or not Mexican, in any event. The literal translation (if you ran it through Google or Babelfish or something) is "The Reluctant One"..and yes that objectively would be a terrible boxing nickname. However it also has a common use connotation of "stubborn, ornery, mule-like, unwilling to be tamed", an important cultural nuance that Mexicans would just automatically know how to interpret. That connotation makes it about the most appropriate moniker, IMO, that you could possibly ever come up with for Soto Karass.

 

Yeah, one that deserves better. JSK has paid his dues many times over in boxing. He of all people should not be reduced to fodder.

 

He should be licensed to fight as long as he's able.

He doesn't have any business getting sanctioned to be fed to an unbeaten hard-hitting aggressive 27 year old southpaw coming in winless since 2013 and looking shot to bits in his last few outings.

The outrage here isn't JSK fighting so everyone can **** off with any such nonsense strawman BS. The outrage is him being tossed into the gladiatorial arena on the wrong side of a gross mismatch, playing the same gatekeeper role at 36 as he did in his prime