Promoter Bob Arum is confident his matchmakers at Top Rank can rebuild heavyweight Jared Anderson to bounce back after he suffered a fifth-round knockout against Martin Bakole on August 3.
Can Top Rank rebuild its Manufactured Fighter?
It will take time for Anderson to rebuild because his loss to Bakole was brutal. He has shown that his punch resistance is not at the level it should be for him to be a top level fighter.
Top Rank was grooming Jared to become America’s #1 heavyweight to turn him into a star. They had watched him carefully, taking no chances after former IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin had injured him in 2023, and journalist Jerry Forrest had done the same in 2022.
Arum says it wasn’t Top Rank’s choice to match the 24-year-old Anderson (17-1, 15 KOs) against the powerful 6’6″ Bakole (21-1, 16 KOs) on the card of Riyadh season at the BMO. Stadium last August. His Excellency Turki Alalshikh approached Anderson and offered him the fight against Bakole, and he agreed to take it.
The highly ranked Bakole promptly destroyed Anderson, dropping him three times in a fifth-round knockout loss. It wasn’t remotely competitive, as Bakole had too much power for Anderson, who was knocked down in the first round after being stunned by an uppercut, and twice more in the fifth.
“It was the dumbest fight Jared could have taken,” Bob Arum said Fight Freaks UniteThey are talking about Jared Anderson who chose to face Martin Bakole on August 3rd.
“He (Jared) has never fought a man like that, so the fact that he got taken down and knocked out was not surprising. So, don’t put it on my matchmakers. We were up against that fight. But again, when they wave money at these kids, they insist on taking it,” Arum said.
It is not clear how much money Turki Alalshikh paid Anderson to take the fight with Bakole, but it may be worth it to him if it was considerable. The way Anderson had looked in his fights against Martin and Forrest, he was going to find out sooner or later anyway. Those fights showed that Anderson lacks the punch endurance to take hard shots at the pro level.
In Anderson’s recent contest against Ryad Merhy on April 13, he looked timid, retreated when attacked and fought much like a bigger version of Shakur Stevenson. The way Anderson reacted when Merhy pressed him was the look of a fighter who had a weak chin that he was protecting.
Is Anderson worth saving?
It may not be possible for Top Rank to rebuild Jared Anderson because he was flawed from the beginning, and they cannot create one fake star based on confrontation with reporters and washed-up older fighters.
Some would argue that’s what Top Rank was doing Edgar Berlanga before he started fighting when they advanced him by matching against C-level fighters instead of D-level guys. Creating pseudo-stars to sell to the public won’t work if they can’t even handle B-level opposition.
Some fighters can be turned into minor stars with weak matchmaking. Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis is a perfect example of this. He only fought fringe opposition throughout his career, but became a PPV attraction. This is what is wrong with boxing. Promoters create fake stars, sell their mismatches to the public, and get poor products.
Anderson will never again be elevated above the level of an undercard fighter, and may not win a world title or challenge for one. With young heavyweights like Daniel Dubois around, Anderson can’t wait for the current crop of older fighters, Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, to capture a belt.
