Hearn makes huge offer for Linares to fight Campbell in UK

Boxingnews24.com

By Juan Flores: Matchroom Sport boxing promoter Eddie Hearn has made WBA World lightweight champion Jorge Linares a huge offer to fight Luke Campbell in a rematch in the UK in January, according to Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez.

Linares lost out on an important unification fight against WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia this week when the Oxnard, California based star rejected an offer from Golden Boy Promotions to make the Linares-Garcia fight.

Campbell was very upset after his loss to Linares last September, given that he felt that he dominated the middle portion of the fight and deserved the decision. It looked to this boxing writer like Linares had won rounds 1-4 and 10-12, which gave him 7 rounds to 5 for Campbell. That’s what the judges saw, which is why they gave the win to Linares.

Linares (43-3, 27 KOs) already beat Campbell (17-2, 14 KOs) by a 12 round split decision 2 months ago on September 23 at The Forum in Inglewood, California. The judges scored it 115-112, 114-113 for Linares, and 115-113 for Campbell. Just so you know, the judge that scored the fight for Campbell 115-113, Victor Loughlin, is from the UK.

Hearn said he thought Campbell should have been given the vicory, and he believes the outcome of the fight would have been different had the fight taken place in the UK.

“Eddie made us a huge offer to fight Luke Campbell in the rematch, so we’ll discuss it with Linares and also talk to Peter about opponents for a fight in January on HBO,” Eric Gomez said to ESPN.com.

Some boxing fans might suspect that Linares is being lured into a horrible position if he agrees to fight Campbell in the UK. When you’re the champion, it’s probably not a good idea to go into your opponent’s backyard to fight. We saw what happened to Kostya Tszyu when he fought Ricky Hatton in the UK. Tszyu was the champion, and the fight turned into a gloried wrestling match and foul-fest on the inside.

Hearn seems to have a lot of interest in bringing Linares to the UK, as he’s now had him fight 3 times over there in the last 2 years against his fighters Kevin Mitchell and Anthony Crolla. Linares is perfect so far in his fights in the UK in twice beating Crolla and defeating Mitchell. If Hearn keeps bringing Linares back to the UK, eventually he’s going to run out of luck and wind up losing.

Linares is going to need to think long and hard whether it’s worth it to travel to the UK for a fourth time to fight Campbell, who captured a gold medal for Great Britain in the 2012 Olympics. It might be a little risky for Linares to give Campbell hometown advantage in this fight. You can’t say the September 23 fight was home country advantage for Linares against Campbell, as Jorge is from Venezuela, and he lives in Tokyo, Japan. The U.S was a neutral country for the Linares vs. Campbell fight.

If the money is good enough for Linares to risk giving Campbell hometown advantage in England, then he should take the fight. If not, then Linares should focus on fighting in a location where he wouldn’t be battling the judges for 12 rounds.