Next move for the new IBF middleweight champion Darren Barker

There is a Geale rematch. Lucrative option to be staged in possibly three different countries. Fairly high risk to reward given how close it was. (though I had Barker 116-111...he was the better overall man on the night but there were a few scares and going by the stats it was a seesaw affair)

There is his current de facto mandatory Felix Sturm. It would sell well at home, as UK audiences have become very familiar with Sturm and view him in a villainous light due to Murray and Macklin falling short in their challenges for the belt now on Barker's waist. Seeing Barker make his first defense against the long-declining Sturm and possibly giving him a beating would be very satisfying to many Brits, as would forcing Sturm to hit the road as he made others do for so long with Barker now having the leverage to insist, dangling the bait of Sturm's old possession in front of him.

There is the "real" de jure mandatory Sam Soliman. Currently Soliman is serving a nine-month ban for alleged PED use which he is still protesting (first claiming it to have been a false positive and then blaming an ingredient of a caffeinated supplement beverage he imbibed thinking it contained no banned substances). As soon as his penalty clock runs out, he is the #1 contender again displacing Sturm. This would provide for a "revenge" angle (followed by the very attractive notion of a potential domestic world title showdown between Soliman and Geale) for Australian fans and perhaps make sense financially to have down there, but maybe wouldn't generate a lot of excitement in Great Britain. It would probably be a decent one to watch, in some ways similar to Geale vs. Barker given Soliman's work rate, but with Sam it nearly always gets a bit untidy and ugly. This wouldn't sell in the US either.

Of course it could be a damned-if-you-do situation among the aforementioned three. Take on the mandatory Sturm and be said to have ducked a Geale rematch. Take a Geale rematch and be said to have ducked your mandatory Sturm. Wait for Soliman - the actual mandatory who earned the #1 spot in an eliminator fair and square - and be said to have ducked both.

There is unification. That means Golovkin, Quillin, and/or a Martinez rematch. Barker would be immune to criticism for the rest of his career if he chanced getting in with any of them early in his reign. They are not all impossible feats (especially with Martinez - once the clear h2h frontrunner at 160 and the only middleweight making p4p lists as high as #3 - having begun to appear very mortal of late, starting with Martinez vs. Barker I and tumbling rapidly downhill from there...) Quillin lets him keep his foot in the door of the American market, following up on the positive visibility the Geale war gained him. Stylistically it honestly isn't a great look for Barker, yet he could pull it off if he boxed intelligently as he is capable of doing. Golovkin is a bridge too far but you would need to designate Barker the GOAT p4p of brass balls if he pursued that destiny.

There is his unsettled business at home with his peers. There has been rabid demand for Barker vs. Macklin, Barker vs. Murray, or Barker vs. Lee since before any of them got a whiff of a world title. (at one time McEwan was in that mix as the "fifth Beatle", but his spot has probably been appropriated by Saunders by now) At the very least Murray and Macklin can make strong cases for deserving a charity shot at redemption and you would be hard-pressed to find someone too critical of them getting another try. These would be HUGE events, making a lot of money.

In my opinion those represent his ten or so best options from where he stands. They aren't the only creditable routes he can take, but they are the most. He actually has a wealth of different options to both pad his coffers and put together a respectable title run.

Floating around the division you have the resurgent Danny Jacobs, the imminently returning Dmitry Pirog, the dangerous but profitably named Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., the perennially ranked and tenacious Marco Antonio Rubio, the very talented and no-longer-under-house-arrest Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam, the enigmatic Matt Korobov, the good boy Gabriel Rosado...

Any of those would be acceptable. Someone from the main three groups listed above (the IBF claimants Geale, Sturm and Soliman; the other champs Golovkin, Quillin and Martinez; and the fellow Brit contenders Macklin, Lee and Murray) would be ideal.

 

:good

ITT have been named almost twenty opponents which to me would merit respect. (Geale, Sturm, Soliman, Golovkin, Quillin, Martinez, Macklin, Murray, Lee, Saunders, Jacobs, Pirog, Chavez, Rubio, N'Dam N'Jikam, Korobov, Rosado...)

It'd be a damn shame if we end up seeing him go down a "safe path" defending against the likes of Predrag Radosevic, Anthony Mundine, and Jose Miguel Torres - all top 15 in the IBF. :err

Barker has earned my respect over the years, but all it takes is a year or two of holding a world title hostage to completely & justifiably dash opinions toward a boxer.

 

Nice plan. I kind of can't decide what order I think would be the best for him, but I would love to see Geale II, Sturm (rather than Soliman, admittedly, despite Soliman having the better claim and likely getting the short end of the stick unfairly here, especially if he was innocent of knowingly using a PED), Macklin and/or Murray, and then yeah top it all off with a stab at unification. YOLO!

 

OH DAMN IT I HATE THAT.

The stupid bb code messed up where it ought to say "unranked in the IBF top 15 since 2008" next to Lee in the poll. I forgot you can't have a close-parenthesis next to a number 8, or it makes that stupid emoticon with the sunglasses.

...and polls can't be edited! c

 

Please merge this with the following thread:

http://www.boxingforum24.com/showthread.php?t=486098

...but keep this version of the poll.

The bbcode screwed up the original for me.

Thanks!

 

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