Jared Anderson is demoted to tonight’s preliminary card 10-round rebuilding fight against little-known heavyweight Marios Kollias at Madison Square Garden Theater in New York City.

Anderson is fighting on the undercard of Denys Berinchyk vs. Keyshawn Davis. The event will be shown live on ESPN and ESPN+ starting at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT. It’s unclear where Kollias was found for this fight. This is worse than I thought. It shows Jared’s dire situation for him following his blowout loss to Martin Bakole.

This is like re-starting Anderson’s career from the beginning, giving him a coloring book and some crayons to start scribbling.

Was He Ever Any Good?

Top Rank had been building the 25-year-old Anderson (17-1, 15 KOs) as the replacement for aging ex-heavyweight champion Tyson Fury to be their next star, but he was found out by Martin Bakole in a devasting fifth-round knockout on August 3rd last summer on Turki Al-Sheikh’s card in Los Angeles.

Anderson was dropped in the first and twice more in the fifth round before the referee waved it off. What surprised me was how Jared made it that far.

If promoter Bob Arum had his eyes open, he could have spotted problems with the Ohio native Jared Anderson long before he was blasted to the next galaxy by Bakole. Anderson had been staggered in fights against Jerry Forrest, Charles Martin, and Ryad Merhy.

That should have let Arum and Top Rank know they were pouring money into a losing cause with Anderson. With a fighter like that, you can’t shield them from hard with careful matchmaking because they’ll get exposed sooner or later.

Fury made a goldmine being protected with careful matchmaking during his career, taking one win over a shot Klitschko and transmuting it to a gold mine. Anderson can’t follow that same path because he’s getting batted around the ring by even journeymen.

If you’re  Top Rank, it might be wise to pull the plug on Anderson if he looked hellishly bad tonight against the 33-year-old Kollias. It’s better for the promotional company to cut their losses asap if Jared struggles tonight. He’s NOT going to be another Fury, taking one big win over an over-the-hill Wlad and making huge dough from that one victory.

Anderson has been keeping a low profile since his loss to Bakole, a classic example of the shame response to his failure against Bakole. Jared looks like he’s put on some pounds, appearing thick around his midsection. He’s obviously been eating good since his loss. I just hope he doesn’t live to regret not coming in a little slimmer for tonight’s fight.