Is Xander Zayas Ready? Bob Arum’s “Great Talent” Faces Jorge Garcia Test

Bob Arum is eager to see what his fighter, Xander Zayas, can do this Saturday when he battles Jorge Garcia for the vacant WBO junior middleweight title at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Arum says Zayas (21-0, 13 KOs) is “very marketable” and a “great talent.”

(Credit: Mikey Williams/Top Rank)

Is Zayas Ready for Garcia?

“He’s a terrific kid. Very articulate and bilingual. So, he’s very marketable,“ said Bob Arum to Fighthype, talking about Xander Zayas. “That doesn’t mean he’s going to be a great fighter. He’s worked hard at it, and he’s proved he has great talent in the ring.”

Zayas hasn’t proven that he’s a “great talent in the ring.” That’s the whole problem. With the opposition that Top Rank has been shoveling into the ring, Zayas has proven nothing.

Boxing’s Next Puerto Rican Champion?

“Now, he’s fighting for a world title. My hope is that Saturday night, he’ll be crowned as yet another Puerto Rican world champion,” said Arum about Xander.

The opposition that Zayas has fought thus far hasn’t been good enough to predict a favorable outcome for him against Jorge Garcia. We know that Zayas is good enough to beat lesser fighters like Damian Sosa, Slawa Spomer, and Patrick Teixeira.

“I watched that fight, Tszyu and Fundora,” said Arum when asked about the possibility of Zayas fighting WBC junior middleweight champion Fundora in a unification contest if he captures the WBO title on Saturday night. “Either Tszyu has lost something and was not on his game, or Fundora has turned into Superman.”

It was a combination of things that led to Tszyu losing to Fundora a second time. That’s not Arum’s concern now. He should keep Zayas away from Fundora because he would likely do the same thing to him that he did to Tszyu.

Janibek Matchup for Zayas?

“Let’s win this fight first,” said Arum about Xander’s fight against Garcia. “There are a number of possibilities [for Zayas]. I don’t want to call out anybody specifically, but there are a lot of junior middleweights. We have a middleweight champion we could match him with, which is Janibek. So, there are a lot of guys he can fight.”

Matching Zayas against IBF and WBO middleweight champion Janibek Alimkhanuly would be a bad idea. No matter how good Xander looks on Saturday night, putting him in against Janibek would be a foolish idea. Zayas isn’t that type of talent. He’s a finesse-level fighter from the Shakur mold.

Matching him against a power puncher like Janibek or Bakhram Murtazaliev would be a disaster. He could implode on Saturday, going up against Jorge Garcia. If that happens, Top Rank will have wasted all that time trying to develop him for the last six years. If they had taken the training wheels off earlier, they’d have discovered whether it was worth it to keep him around in the stable.

“The most important fight is the guy he’s fighting on Saturday, which is Garcia, that he’s got to beat first,” said Arum.

It could go very badly for Zayas on Saturday, with him getting blown out by Garcia. That’s got to worry Arum because he doesn’t know how well Xander will do. He’s matched him against such weak opposition up until now that it’s entirely impossible to predict an outcome in this fight.