Tevin Farmer eyeing move to lightweight!
Despite his upcoming January 30 title defense against Joseph “Jo-Jo” Diaz (30-1, 15 KO’s), IBF world super featherweight champion Tevin “The American Dream” Farmer (30-4-1, 6 KO’s) feels that he is not long for the division.
In a perfect world, Farmer would be allowed to tangle with the other belt holding champions and shoot for undisputed.
NOW OR NEVER
However, due to the politics of the day, the American Dream has little faith that this will transpire. And if those desirable prizefights continue to play “keep-away,” he has every intention on taking his talents one division north.
Although, at the current moment, the IBF champ does not know when that leap up will take place.
The hardened Philly fighter revealed his candid thoughts on moving up in an interview with AB Boxing News.
“What do I want to accomplish? I want to unify the titles, fight for all the belts, undisputed. Do I think that is going to happen? NO! It’s not going to happen.
“I’m moving up regardless, in my time. I’m undecided, maybe after this fight, maybe two fights from now, I don’t know. But I’m definitely going to move up.
“It’s a lot of good competition up there and maybe if I fight at 135, the promoters will feel like they can beat me, so maybe they will take the fight.
“But at 130, I don’t think the promoters out there feel like their fighters can beat me.”
TRENDSETTER
Thinking of himself as a forward and strategic thinker, the last thing that Farmer wants to do is waste precious time chasing fights he’ll never obtain. Having amassed a substantial amount of losses early in his career, it was easy to write him off.
In spite of the detrimental initial setbacks, however, Farmer resolved himself to be successful and began his slow crawl to the top. This grueling endeavor proved to be fruitful. When he enters the ring with Diaz, it will be to make his fifth defense of the IBF strap he won in August 2018.
As one would expect, he is happy to be champion, but he is also proud to be a persevering trendsetter.
Because of the success that he has relished in since his early career defeats, Farmer is under the impression that he is changing the perception of fighters with numerous losses.
In this “0” worshiping era that we’re in now, that is saying a whole lot.
“And what I feel like I’m doing is giving a lot of other fighters opportunities with losses. I feel like a lot of promoters are looking at guys and they thinking about me like, ‘damn this guy did it, maybe we can get him a shot, maybe we should change.’
“Because when you don’t have the right backing behind you, you just another fighter. I know plenty of great fighters but they don’t have the right promoter so you would never know, you know what I’m saying?”
WHAT’S GOOD FOR FIGHTERS AND SPORT
It would be cool if the deification of the undefeated boxer was scaled back a bit. On the one hand, it leads to far too many fighters avoiding great fights for fear of being bested.
On the other hand, too often talented boxers like Shawn Porter, Tony Harrison or Julian Williams, to name a few, are capriciously written off simply for having blemishes on their record.
If losses were shown greater forgiveness, so long as the fighters behaved like a fighter in the ring, it would be an overall benefit to the sport at large.
Let’s hope this notion matriculates from mere wishful thinking to a more practical reality!
By: Bakari Simpson
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