DURING a lively press tour to promote the super-bantamweight unification fight between Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg, the latter’s trainer, Joe Gallagher, claimed the fight will be ‘easy’ for his charge.
Opinion is split among experts and fans alike over how the fight on February 27 will go, though Gallagher has complete faith in his man.
The comment both riled and baffled Team Frampton and Gallagher revealed to Boxing News why he feels Quigg could stop Carl early in the fight.
“What I’ve seen of Scott Quigg in the gym and what I’m still waiting for him to do in the ring, that’s why I think it will be an easy fight,” he told us.
“It was only the Kiko Martinez win when people took notice of Scott. It’s always been the Bible according to Barry [McGuigan, Frampton’s manager] and no one’s really listened to us.
“Carl Frampton can only do one of two things – he’ll come forward like he did against Chris Avalos or he’ll revert to his amateur style like he did against Kiko. He calls it bamboozling, I call it running. He’ll be on the back foot, poking and poking and moving. But they don’t know what Quigg’s going to do.”
In his most recent outing, Frampton had to rise from two first-round knockdowns to outpoint unheralded Alejandro Gonzalez in El Paso, Texas while Quigg blitzed Martinez in two rounds on the same night in Manchester.
The Gonzalez fight was Frampton’s first with influential advisor Al Haymon and Gallagher feels the Ulsterman’s performance and an apparent disappointing turnout forced him to face Quigg in Manchester.
“If you ask Scott Quigg, he’d say he’d rather fight in Belfast. It’d motivate him more, the crowd. He lives, breathes and trains it,” he said.
“They’re coming to Manchester, Barry doesn’t have fond memories of Manchester. They’ve got a lot of mental obstacles to overcome.
“Last time Carl travelled he got put down early, he might not travel well.
“They signed with Al Haymon so they had visions of fighting in big money blockbusters in America against the likes of Leo Santa Cruz, Abner Mares. I think when they saw the money on the table for Cruz, and then there was no atmosphere at his fight with Gonzalez, they thought, ‘we best go back to England.’”
