Eddie Hearn says that Daniel Jacobs has completed his contract with Matchroom Boxing in finishing it with his close 12 round unanimous decision victory over Gabriel Rosado last Friday night at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.
Jacobs is now a free agent, and it’ll be interesting to see which promoter ends up with him.
If Hearn is going to use Jacobs in the future for fights, it would obviously be against these guys:
- Billy Joe Saunders
- Demetrius Andrade
- Gennadiy Golovkin
- Callum Smith
- Canelo Alvarez
As negative as Jacobs looked in his fights with Canelo and Rosado, it would be surprising if GGG and Alvarez want to give him a rematch.
Daniel made it boring
It could be boring for the fans if those popular fighters use Jacobs as a future opponent because he doesn’t look like the same guy he used to be.
Danny’s matches against Golovkin, Canelo, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, and Maciej Sulecki have aged him.
Hearn told the AK & Barak Show on @SiriusXMBoxing that Jacobs’ victory over Rosado (25-13-1, 14 KOs) was the last one on his Matchroom contract. He’d still “love” to use the 33-year-old Jacobs for fights in the future.
It doesn’t appear that Hearn will be re-signed by Matchroom, which isn’t that surprising given how poorly he fought in beating the 34-year-old Rosado in their match on DAZN.
After weeks of trash talking and telling the media how he was going to dominate Rosado, Jacobs won a dull 12 round decision by the scores 115-113, 115-113, and 115-113.
Could things have been different if Jacobs had fought high-caliber fighters in his final two fights with Matchroom? Hearn wanted Jacobs to face Callum Smith and John Ryder.
Instead of facing either of those guys, Jacobs fought Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Rosado. He didn’t look particularly exciting in either of those fights, and he seemed to play it safe.
Against Chavez Jr, Jacobs landed some hard shots in the fifth round that broke his nose, and he quit after the round ended.
Hearn disappointed in Jacobs-Rosado
“It was a poor fight, a really poor fight,” Hearn said about Jacobs’s match against Rosado last Friday. “They talked such a great game for months.
“Danny was saying he’s going to get him to respect him and that he’s going to do this, and I was expecting a really good fight. Gabe, he put some tactics together with Freddie Roach, which was to box and be smart.
“But it was so flat. I Tweeted after the fight, saying, ‘No one deserved to win.’ Who do I think really won the fight? I don’t know.
“I had arguments for both guys. Gabe boxed really well, outboxed him at times. Danny had the more telling punches, but there weren’t many of them.
“I finished the fight saying, ‘I have no idea who won.’ And it was disappointing; I can’t lie. I watched the full 12 rounds, and it was five o’clock in the morning.
“Danny was very honest in his post-fight interview where he said, ‘I don’t know. The atmosphere, it felt like a sparring match at times,’ and that’s what it looked like.
“It looked like two guys that basically decided, ‘I can get through this fight and win this fight by not getting involved and moving around and boxing.’
You can imagine Hearn’s disappointment with the Jacobs vs. Rosado fight, as they failed to live up to their trash talk. But Jacobs is the one that rates most of the criticism because he’s the one that wanted the Rosado.
In other words, Rosado wanted an easy fight rather than to follow Hearn’s wishes that he take on Callum Smith or John Ryder.
Jacobs failed to make a statement
“It’s not what we want to see. We want to see two geezers going in there and to back up everything they’re saying,” Hearn continued about how boring the Jacobs vs. Rosado fight was for him.
“Go in there and knock seven kettles out of each other. That is the fight; that’s what we want as fight fans. I spent two nights this weekend being a fight fan.
“So I was a fight fan in watching our card in Florida, and I was a fight fan watching the BT card on Saturday. As a fan, I was really disappointed with Jacobs vs. Rosado.
“Of course, I was. It was an opportunity for Danny Jacobs to go in and make a statement at 168 pounds, and he didn’t do it. Just like the MC, we all make mistakes.
“Sometimes you don’t perform, and Danny Jacobs is a tremendous fighter, and, of course, he’ll land a big fight at 168. He [Gabe] responded to my Tweet saying ‘neither fighter deserved to win.’
“He’s like, ‘How can I not deserve to win? I outboxed him.’ But the truth is, Gabe had a chance in the closing rounds; I felt to close it out.
“What Gabe was doing was relying on the fight being very close and trying to nick it by staying out of trouble and boxing.
“This is my opinion as a fan. I actually think that if Gabe had put his foot on the gas, Danny was so unresponsive in the fight; if Gabe had done a bit more, he might have deserved the victory.
“So he sort of said, ‘I outboxed him, I’m not getting any credit for outboxing him.’ But I can only tell you, as a fan, it was a very average fight. It’s just an honest opinion,” said Hearn.
If you know that this is your last fight on your contract with Matchroom, it was a big mistake for Jacobs not to finish it with a bang.
But perhaps Jacobs felt that he would still get the fights against Canelo, Golovkin, Saunders, or Callum Smith even if he made it painfully boring.
Instead of Jacobs and Rosado putting in an exciting fight, welterweight Daniyar Yeleussinov is the one that performed well in stealing the show with a second-round knockout win over former IBF/WBA light-welterweight champion Julius Indongo.
The 2016 Olympic gold medalist Yeleussinov fought like he wanted to make a statement, and he did, in fact, do that.
You can bet that when Yeleussinov’s contract with Matchroom expires, he’ll be quickly re-signed by them because he provided entertainment, not boredom.
