IBF/WBA World Super-Bantamweight titles:
Carl Frampton (21-0) v Scott Quigg (31-0-2)
(Saturday, live on Sky Box Office from 4pm, main event 10.30pm approx)
THERE’S always a ‘but’. Ask anyone – bar the fighters and their nearest and dearest – who wins tonight and they’ll pick one before hesitating for a second and adding “but the other guy has a chance too…”
Fight fans have enjoyed discussing this 12-round grudge match ad infinitum for months now but thankfully the time for talking is almost over. On Saturday night, we’ll find out whether Carl Frampton is the champion we think he is or whether Scott Quigg is capable of ripping his title from his grasp.
Someone’s ‘0’ has got to go and the winner takes it all: the titles, the glory and more: “There’s a lot of pride and bragging rights. I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to win,” said Frampton.
“I don’t want to lose, I’ve put so much into it - 17 weeks of training camp, the longest ever. I’m not going to let this guy rip this away from me, this is my life.”
Frampton expects Quigg to start on the front foot and then retreat when he lands his first big shot. After that he intends to pick him off and box his way to an emphatic win: “Once he gets hit, once I land on him he’ll go into his shell and I’ll out-box him until he gets brave enough to open up and when he does open up he’ll get knocked out.
“But if he doesn’t, if he keeps his hands to his chin it may go the distance. If it does go the distance it’ll be a comprehensive points win for me.”
The vocal presence of a group of Scott Quigg-supporting middle-aged ladies illustrated how this fight has transcended normal sporting boundaries. It has genuine cross-over appeal, but Frampton rejected comparisons with the famous Erik Morales/Marco Antonio Barrera trilogy that also started at 122lbs.
“It has the ingredients to be that but I’m planning on it being so one-sided and comprehensive that it won’t warrant a rematch,” he said.
“They talk about Barrera and Morales because they were so well-matched and they had such great fights but I don’t see this fight being like that. I see it being a one-sided fight.”
Quigg agrees, but says composure will win the day and predicts that he’ll “take him [Frampton] out”: “What wins this fight is composure,” said the Bury fighter.
“I’ll go in and box and do what I need to do at each stage of the fight and make the right moves at the right time. He’ll come out and try and keep his cool but only for so long and then he’ll bite and when he tries to take the bait that’s when I’ll take him out.”
Like Frampton he doesn’t entertain the notion of losing and says the fear of it drives him on: “I don’t think about defeat,” he said.
“The fear of failure is what drives me on. I could be having a game of Connect 4 and my sister might win and I’ll hit the thing and the pieces will go everywhere – ‘right we’ll have another game, you cheated on that one’. I don’t think about it [losing] but I know that if you don’t prepare and do what I do, that can happen. That fear of failure makes me get up every morning and do what I need to do that day.”
Quigg was a promising midfielder on the books of Burnley until he was 15 and thought his future lay in football. After he was released he was a successful Thai boxer before switching to boxing at 15. He spent the early days of his professional career with Ricky Hatton before switching to Joe Gallagher, who currently has three world champions in his Manchester gym.
“Joe trains his fighters and he dedicates his life to the sport,” said Quigg.
“I dedicate my life to the sport and when you’ve got a trainer and a fighter doing that you’ve got a winning formula.”
As single-minded as they come, Quigg drives himself relentlessly and says he loves what he does: “There’s one thing that doesn’t motivate me and that’s money,” he said.
“Money doesn’t make you happy. You look at celebrities that suffer from depression and they’re multi-millionaires. I wake up every morning and do something I love. Every penny I make my mum and dad can have, my fiancé can have. I’m not driven by money, what I’m driven by is the will to win.”
There can only be one winner of course and Frampton’s camp don’t feel that Quigg has the strength to keep the pressure on for 12 rounds on Saturday night. They are confident that if Quigg sits back and tries to box his way to victory their man should win it.
That makes sense because Frampton is the better, slicker boxer with good footwork and head movement and he is an accurate, venomous puncher who will hurt Quigg when he lands clean. But while ‘the Jackal’ holds the advantage in some areas Quigg is probably ahead in terms of one-punch power and the attempts to label the Bury man as a one-dimensional pug who charges in swinging don’t do him justice.
There has been a lot of talk about his boxing brain or lack of it, but the grey matter inside that granite head of his has taken him this far, hasn’t it? He is a world champion after all. His game up to now has been about pressure and, after Frampton was dropped twice in the opening round in Texas, surely he’ll try to make a big statement and seize the initiative early on.
The key to the fight is likely to be Frampton’s power off the back foot. At some stage Quigg – whether he’s ahead or not – will be open for a big shot as he looks to throw a right hand and that could be his undoing.
This fight has all the makings of a classic and it could boil down to a slip here or a lazy shot there. Frampton starts as favourite to win it on points or maybe with a late stoppage, but…
