And while we like to pretend that this kind of thing doesn’t matter, we have to admit there is a small chance that planning plays a role in whether or not we’ll be able to retire at 78 like we hope to. 401K, IRA, gold, stocks, bonds, bitcoin, passive vs. active investing, strict budgeting, lottery tickets – it seems that we’ve been told about these things by earnest believers at various points in our lives. And we always thought we’d educate ourselves in one area and feel confident that we knew enough about it to secure our financial freedom for our final few months in life. But instead, we just watched a lot of boxing.
Since we can’t get motivated to learn about anything new we want to find out if simply continuing to watch boxing, but also betting on it, is all we need to do to build our future. Though we have seen an awful lot of boxing matches, we have never placed an actual bet on boxing. And we think there is a very real possibility that watching a lot of boxing doesn’t translate into being a good boxing bettor. But we have to find out.
We will set aside a $1,000 bankroll and bet it only on boxing and compare the annualized rate of return to the rate of return on our very small mutual fund account that is split evenly between two growth funds. We’ll place the bets according to the median daily odds found at proboxingodds.com. We know line shopping is important but not everyone has all the lines available to them so we’re not going to take the best or the worst odds available. We did read one short betting article before we started typing here and have a very basic framework of our strategy. We’ll be primarily betting money lines and over/under and will only bet 1-10% of our total bankroll on any one bet. We may make prop bets from time to time as they are available. That’s the idea anyway. We’ve never stuck to our plans in any other area so there is a very real chance that we may get on a roll of two straight wins and then immediately cash in the mutual funds and bet it all on Roy Jones-Mike Tyson. And if we’re really bad at this we’ll probably try to find someone better to carry on. But we’ll continue to bet. Everyone loves an underdog story.
This week we’re betting Top Rank’s main event on Saturday, Jose Pedraza vs. Javier Molina. Pedraza is the slight favorite here and has been in the more high profile fights. This will be his third fight at 140 where he doesn’t carry natural advantages in length like he did at 130 and 135. He’s never been a guy who relied on one-punch power but he’s a fairly sharp puncher when he lets them go. But he can sometimes get too comfortable at range and not throw enough to command the fight. And that’s why we’re picking Molina, a once-heralded prospect in his 6th fight after a 30 month layoff that ended in 2018. Molina is coming down in weight from 147 and just seems like the naturally bigger man though they share similar dimensions. We think he’s got better feet and a little more hand speed and will outwork Pedraza in a good, close fight.
$20 on Javier Molina at +139
We’re also placing an early bet on Errol Spence vs. Danny Garcia. There has been a lot of speculation about whether Spence will suffer the effects of his car wreck last year. We have no idea. But even before the fight was announced we felt like Spence at 80% would be enough to beat Garcia. And if there was concern among those close to Spence about his ability to continue his boxing career at the same level, we think he’d be fighting Bud Crawford here as there would be too much money to potentially leave on the table. Beyond that simplistic analysis, we’ve seen Garcia fight passively in his biggest fights and we think Spence will set a pace Garcia would rather not keep. His counter punching will get home from time to time but we don’t believe he has true fight ending power at 147. We’ll place a bet now and watch the line as the fight gets closer. We’re sure we’ll add to it but we want to get in now in case the line widens.
$50 on Errol Spence at -333
That’s all for this week. The only other line we might have been tempted to play was Tugstsogt Nyambayar vs. Cobia Breedy. Nyambayar is -580 here and we don’t have time to research Breedy. But we probably don’t like that line anyway for either man.