Boxing has chance to capitalize on its big year by increasing fighter ‘trading’

After the strongest boxing year of the decade, the sport could use another such year to emerge from the nagging “boxing-is-dead” cries that arise whenever the action disappoints or slows.

One possible path to ensuring that is “trading,” a proposal spawned by veteran promoter Bob Arum and embraced by Showtime executive vice president Stephen Espinoza.

For instance, while it appears 2018 will include a Canelo Alvarez-Gennady Golovkin rematch on HBO and unbeaten heavyweight champions Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder inch closer to a showdown, one of the best fights that could be made would be a welterweight bout between former 140-pound division champion Terence Crawford and either of the two unbeaten 147-pound champions, Keith Thurman or Errol Spence Jr.

Another appetizing match at 135 pounds would be unbeaten three-division champion Mikey Garcia and super-featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko.

The obstacles to those latter bouts are the television networks and the promoters linked to them. Crawford and Lomachenko fight for Arum on ESPN and Garcia, Thurman and Spence are connected to Showtime and powerful manager Al Haymon.

Trading could be the start of the solution that builds a bridge to those fights ultimately happening.

While not yet mapped out in a meeting, the premise of trading is something like this: Arum allows his World Boxing Organization featherweight champion Oscar Valdez to fight the winner of the spring’s Leo Santa Cruz-Abner Mares winner on Showtime.

In return, Showtime/Haymon would air its coming Adonis Stevenson-Badou Jack light-heavyweight-title winner against Arum/ESPN’s top contender, Oleksandr Gvozdyk.

“We have no problem doing that,” Arum told The Times after Espinoza suggested the idea had merit at a Los Angeles news conference for Mikey Garcia’s Feb. 10 junior-welterweight title shot on Showtime at champion Sergey Lipinets in San Antonio.

“It wouldn’t be fair to use all his fighters on ESPN and not give him something back.”

Espinoza expressed disappointment that the Dec. 9 Top Rank/ESPN card, capped by Lomachenko’s dominant stoppage of former fellow two-time Olympic gold medalist Guillermo Rigondeaux, was packed with one-sided outcomes while drawing the second-largest cable audience of the year.

“The bigger the audience, the more I hope for a successful, entertaining card,” Espinoza said. “ESPN is putting a lot of assets and putting their cards in great position as far as lead-in [like the Dec. 9 Heisman Trophy presentation], but if you get the audience there … and then it’s a mismatch … that’s a missed opportunity to turn them into boxing fans.”

By granting fighters some inter-network travel, logic says better fights will emerge.

“There is a way for peaceful coexistence,” Espinoza said, pointing to Haymon permitting Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. to fight Alvarez and middleweight Daniel Jacobs to fight Golovkin on HBO earlier this year. “I thought maybe we’d get some consideration back [from HBO]. It didn’t work out that way.”

Jacobs ultimately departed for HBO and HBO has sought, through a closer relationship with Joshua promoter Eddie Hearn, to swipe the unbeaten heavyweight from Showtime once his contract expires after one more fight, probably a late-March/April unification date against Joseph Parker.

But Arum, with ESPN, is promising to make such fighter movement more viable, a concept Espinoza said is worth pursuing while noting, “The problem is bridging from what’s said in the media and what is said behind closed doors.

“Bob has mentioned … the trade … sure, as long as it’s fair. It’s possible, but if we’re going to let superstars go over there [on ESPN] and get trash in return, it’s not going to work out. It’s got to be a two-way street.”