Arias: Jacobs is getting knocked out if he doesn’t run

Boxingnews24.com

By Jim Dower: Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) is poised to make former WBA middleweight champion Danny “Miracle Man” Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) pay for hand-selecting him as his opponent for this Saturday night in his first fight on HBO from The Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York.

Arias says he’s going to knockout Jacobs if he doesn’t get on his bike and run from him like he’s seen him do in the past in some of his fights. Arias wants Jacobs to meet him in the middle of the ring, and fight in a toe-to-toe manner to show the boxing fans who the better man is. Arias has studied enough of Jacobs past fights to learn that he doesn’t like to fight, and that he’ll do anything he can to avoid taking shots.

“My first 15 fights were at super middleweight,” said Arias to Fighthub. “It was the wrong weight class. I’ve been fighting bigger guys my entire career. It’s going to be a fight. Given Daniel Jacobs’ errors he’s made before, my aggressive style, my hunger for the fight, I’m coming out on top.Luis Arias is going to beat Daniel Jacobs. If he doesn’t run, Daniel Jacobs is getting knocked out. I plan on coming out on top. When I beat Danny Jacobs, everyone can get off my back. That’s the plan. I’m [expletive] up everyone’s plans,” said Arias.

Jacobs is supposed to be the man that gets his hand raised on Saturday night. This is a showcase fight for Jacobs. When I say ‘showcase,” I mean it’s a fight where an opponent has been selected to make Jacobs look better than he is. Jacobs chose Arias, so he saw something in his game that makes him feel that he can showcase his skills against him without worry of losing the fight. It’s up to the 27-year-old Arias to prove Jacobs wrong, because the “Miracle Man” believes that Arias has stepped beyond his level in this fight.

It’s hard to say if Arias has stepped above his level. Until Arias’ recent fight against Arif Magomedev, he was a complete unknown. Few boxing fans had heard of Arias until that fight. And while Arias did look good in stopping Magomedev in the 5th round, there’s not enough information from his previous fights to know if he’s stepping above his level in fighting Jacobs. Arias does look like a better fighter than some of Jacobs’ recent opponents such as Sergio Mora, Caleb Truax, Jarrod Fletcher and Milton Nunez.

Arias might even be a better fighter than Peter Quillin. It would have been nice to see Arias in a few more fights against notable opposition before he got the call to fight Jacobs, but oh well. It’s not going to happen like that. Jacobs picked out a green fighter in Arias, and he’s going to try and take advantage of his inexperience on Saturday night in an HBO televised fight for the boxing public’s consumption.

“All I’m saying is facts,” said Arias in talking about Jacobs’ flaws. “Did he not get knocked out? He did. Has he or hasn’t he been dropped? He has. Multiple times people have put him down. Simply look at the facts. He’s been hurt. He’s been dropped. He’s been knocked out. I haven’t been hurt. I haven’t been dropped. I’ve been fighting bigger guys my entire career. I’m ready to shock the world on November 11th. Daniel Jacobs is in a really tough fight. He’s going to find that out right away. Like I said, Danny, I want a war. You said you’re going to knock me out. I’ll be right there in the middle of the ring,” said Arias.

Arias is going to have problems trying to win a boxing match against Jacobs. We saw Gennady Golovkin struggle trying to out-box Jacobs in their fight earlier this year in March. Jacobs uses movement, and looks to win rounds based on landing a small handful of power shots. Jacobs has changed his fighting style completely since earlier in his career when he first turned pro. Jacobs looks to fight smarter now, and avoid getting hit as much as possible. Arias might be waiting a long time if he stands in the center of the ring waiting for Jacobs to join him there. The guy that did well against Jacobs, Dmitry Pirog, followed Jacobs around the ring, using head movement and big shots to eventually stop him in the 5th round in 2010.

Pirog was very confident in that fight with what he wanted to do, and Jacobs looked entirely out of his element for that level of a fighter. Arias has got to know that the best way to beat Jacobs is to pressure him the way Pirog was doing. Even Golovkin spent a lot of time cutting off the ring on Jacobs, forcing him to eat jabs. Jacobs says he neutralized Golovkin’s offense in forcing him to throw just jabs, but it looked more like the jabs were enough for the Kazakhstan fighter to control the fight. Jacobs was tiring himself out with his constant movement. He would have been smart to have stood his ground and traded shots with Golovkin a lot earlier in the contest than he did.

“There are levels to the game inside the ring,” said Jacobs. “Come November 11th, levels. I’m from Brownsville, and I never ran and I never will. This whole notion of me running and not wanting to fight. He wants me to fight, because face it, he’s very limited in the ring. He wants me to stand in the center of the ring and don’t run so he can have his shot to stop me, drop me or hurt me or knock me out. But I want to make you work for everything you get. And then when I’m ready to stand in the center of the ring, I chose to do that, that’s what I’ll do. But you guys know there are levels to this game. You guys know that,” said Jacobs.

Arias is a pretty good fighter. We’ll see whether he’s good enough to compete with Jacobs. One thing is for sure, Jacobs is going to need to face good opposition from this point forward if he’s going to be an HBO fighter. He’s not going to be able to get away with fighting guys like Caleb Truax, Jarrod Fletcher, Milton Nunez, Sergio Mora, Giovanni Lorenzo, Kennan Collins and Chris Fitzpatrick. Those were some of the many record-padding fights that Jacobs has had in the last 6 years of his career. HBO will want quality guys in the ring with Jacobs. It’s going to be up to Arias to show whether he’s got the talent to compete with Jacobs. Right now, Arias is the mystery man, and we don’t know what he’s capable of doing.

”This man is coming to fight. There’s no added pressure, trust me. This is not my first rodeo. When I had a list of options of opponents, I chose Arias. So, I do want to think him for signing the contract. It’s going to be a good display of my skills. I get to display everything,” said Jacobs.

There is pressure on Jacobs, whether he wants to admit it or not. He’s fighting for the first time with his new contract with HBO, and in his first fight with his new promoter Eddie Hearn, who has telling the boxing media that Jacobs is the best fighter in the middleweight division. Jacobs must live up to all that, otherwise he won’t remain an HBO fighter, and stick around long in Hearn’s Matchroom Sport stable. Hearn doesn’t keep fighters in his stable that aren’t able to perform at an elevated level. Jacobs is going to need to prove to Hearn that he made the right decision in signing him to his promotional team, as he’s not shown the kind of talent in the past that would suggest that he’s the best fighter in the 160-lb. division.

“On Saturday night, we get to see the new Danny Jacobs 2.0,” said his new promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport. “The HBO Danny Jacobs, the Danny Jacobs that should be a superstar that is about to become a superstar, who wants to regain his status as a world champion and become undisputed champion of the world. It’s an honor for me to introduce what I believe is the #1 middleweight in world boxing. You guys should be very, very proud of this man,” said Hearn about Jacobs.