Promoter Bob Arum is confident that his matchmakers at Top Rank can rebuild heavyweight Jared Anderson to bring him back after he suffered a fifth-round knockout against Martin Bakole on August 3rd.
Can Top Rank Rebuild Their Manufactured Fighter?
It will take time to rebuild Anderson because his loss to Bakole was brutal. It showed that his punch resistance isn’t at the level that it needs to be for him to be a high-level fighter.
Top Rank was grooming Jared to become America’s #1 heavyweight to transform him into a star. They had been watching him carefully, not taking chances after former IBF heavyweight champion Charles Martin had hurt him in 2023, and journeyman 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) for the Riyadh Season card at the BMO Stadium last August. 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, dropped 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 stupidest fight that Jared could have taken,” said Bob Arum to Fight Freaks Unite, talking about Jared Anderson choosing to face Martin Bakole on August 3rd.
“He [Jared] never fought a guy like that, so the fact that he got taken apart and knocked out was not surprising. So, don’t put it on my matchmakers. We were against that fight. But again, when they wave money at these kids, they insist on taking it,” said Arum.
It’s unclear how much money Turki Alalshikh paid Anderson to take the fight with Bakole, but it may have been worth it to him if it was considerable. The way that Anderson had looked in his fights against Martin and Forrest, he was going to get found out sooner or later anyway. Those fights showed that Anderson lacks the punch resistance to take hard shots at the pro level.
In Anderson’s recent contest against Ryad Merhy on April 13th, he looked timid, retreating when attacked and fighting much like a bigger version of Shakur Stevenson. The way Anderson reacted when Merhy pressured him was the look of a fighter who had a weak chin that he was protecting.
Is Anderson Worth Salvaging?
It may not be possible for Top Rank to rebuild Jared Anderson because he was flawed from the get-go, and they can’t create a fake star based on matching him against journeymen and older washed-up fighters.
Some would argue that’s what Top Rank was doing with Edgar Berlanga before he started struggling when they advanced him by matching him against C-level fighters instead of the D-level guys. Creating pseudo-stars to sell to the public doesn’t work if they cannot handle even B-level opposition.
Some fighters can be transformed into minor stars with weak matchmaking. Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis is a perfect example of that. He’s fought exclusively marginal opposition his entire career, yet he’s become a PPV attraction. This is what’s wrong with boxing. Promoters create fake stars, sell their mismatches to the public, and get poor products.
Anderson will likely never rise above the level of an undercard fighter, and he can’t win a world title or challenge for one. With young heavyweights like Daniel Dubois around, Anderson can’t wait out the current crop of aging fighters, Oleksandr Usyk, Tyson Fury, and Anthony Joshua, to capture a belt.
