The Biggest Questions Surrounding Boxing's Biggest Stars Right Now

The sport of boxing is hotter than it has been in years. Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao promises to break all pay-per-view records. With his Premier Boxing Champions series, power broker Al Haymon has engineered boxing's long-awaited return to network television. 

It's a great time to be a boxing fan. Exciting new stars are emerging, and most of the sport's biggest stars face intriguing questions. 

How they answer those questions might make 2015 a legendary year in the sport's history. 

Danny Garcia is the lineal, WBC and WBA light welterweight champion. But he hasn't defended his crown since his disputed majority-decision victory over Mauricio Herrera nearly a year ago. 

Rather than defend the belt last August, he opted to face unranked lightweight Rod Salka in the most embarrassing mismatch in a year filled with embarrassing mismatches.

The good news is that he'll face a legitimate contender on April 11, when he meets IBF belt-holder Lamont Peterson. The even better news is that the fight will be on network television.

But it is a disappointment that the bout will be fought at a 143-pound catchweight, with none of the titles on the line. This is a big fight. But it would have more relevance if those belts were on the line.   

At 41, Juan Manuel Marquez remains ranked among the top pound-for-pound boxers in the sport. The Ring still has him at seven on its list. 

If he retired today, he'd be a first-ballot Hall of Famer and in every conversation about the top Mexican champions of all time. His legacy is well-established. 

But there is still one more major achievement that he could add to it to become the first five-division champion ever from Mexico. Marquez has been a world champion at 126, 130, 135 and 140 pounds. But so far in welterweight title fights, he has always come up short. 

If Marquez does fight again, it will almost surely be another bid to win a belt at 147. A fight against IBF champion Kell Brook is definitely a possibility. 

And if Manny Pacquiao can pull it off against Floyd Mayweather on May 2, don't be surprised if he follows that triumph with a fifth match against his longtime rival, Marquez, before the end of the year. 

Last October, Sergey Kovalev shut out the legendary Bernard Hopkins to unify three of four titles at light heavyweight. Earlier this month, the Krusher beat former champion Jean Pascal by TKO. 

The fight was held in Pascal's hometown of Montreal. Montreal also happens to be the hometown of Adonis Stevenson, who holds the sole remaining belt at 175 pounds along with a claim to the lineal crown. 

Stevenson was present at Kovalev's victory, and according to Bernard Hopkins, who was part of the HBO broadcast team, he told Hopkins that he would indeed make the fight with Kovalev to establish a true, undisputed champion at light heavyweight. 

Let's hope Stevenson stays good to his word. Alphabet-soup champions have long been a blight on the sport. In today's atmosphere, it's tough to get belts unified, let alone establish a true, undisputed champion. 

If it can finally happen this year at 175 pounds, especially with a pair of exciting fighters like Stevenson and Kovalev, it will be great for the sport. 

Miguel Cotto's TKO of Sergio Martinez last June was perhaps the biggest boxing story of 2014. It earned Cotto the WBC and lineal titles at middleweight, making him the first four-division champion in history from Puerto Rico. 

But since that brilliant triumph, Cotto has sat on his crown, neglecting to defend it. For a while at the end of 2014 and start of this year, a bout between Cotto and Mexican star Saul Alvarez seemed inevitable. But that fight ended up falling through. 

For Cotto's lineal title to continue to be meaningful, he needs to defend it against a true contender. Of course, fans would prefer to see him fight Gennady Golovkin, one of the hottest current fighters in the sport.

But even a fight between the winner of Peter Quillin and Andy Lee would be preferable to seeing the champion continue to sit on the sidelines. If Cotto isn't prepared to defend that bet, he should vacate it.  

Saul Alvarez remains one of the sport's most popular figures. But with boxing surging in mainstream popularity in the early months of 2015, it does seem a little bit like he's getting lost in the shuffle. 

The impending Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao superfight is overshadowing everything else happening in the sport. Alvarez even had to move his upcoming showdown with James Kirkland back a week to accommodate what will likely be the biggest pay-per-view fight in history. 

But beyond that high-profile event, a handful of other emerging stars such as Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev, Keith Thurman and Terence Crawford are all in the process of building fanbases that might potentially rival Canelo's. 

Kirkland is an opponent who Alvarez should be able to beat. More importantly, he should be able to beat Kirkland in an exciting fight. 

On the other hand, Alvarez could face criticism for facing yet another opponent who was handpicked to make him look good. 

Willie Monroe Jr. might not be the most familiar name to casual boxing fans, but it's not an exaggeration to say that he will be the best pure boxer Gennady Golovkin has ever faced when the two face off in May.

Monroe Jr. is a former amateur standout who cruised through last year's ESPN Boxcino tournament without losing a round. In January, Monroe completely outclassed tough veteran contender Bryan Vera. 

There's a huge difference between Vera and GGG, of course. I wouldn't recommend anybody bet against Golovkin at this point, and he'll once again be a heavy favorite against Monroe.

But Monroe will at least present him with the sort of style that he hasn't had to face before at the professional level.  

Between 2009 and 2012, Andre Ward cleaned out the super middleweight division and established himself as one of the sport's top pound-for-pound performers. But after his brilliant TKO destruction of Chad Dawson in September 2012, he's fought just once, against relatively unheralded Edwin Rodriguez in November 2013. 

Ward stayed out of action for all of 2014 while he battled his former promoter, Goossen Promotions, in the courts. Finally, last January, he signed a new contract with rap mogul Jay Z's Roc Nation.

Ward is just 31 and has never taken much punishment in his fights. He's a talented fighter and should make a relatively seamless return to action.

But I'm not about to dismiss the fact that Ward has been inactive for 16 months and has fought just once in the past 30 months.

Boxing is too brutal a sport to take anything for granted. Until Ward gets back in the ring and proves he's still the same elite fighter he was before, it's a mistake to simply assume it is true.  

Heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko will fight on U.S. soil for the first time in over seven years when he faces undefeated contender Bryant Jennings at Madison Square Garden in April. For most of the past decade, Klitschko has made a nice career for himself fighting in Germany, where he is a major sports star. 

Meanwhile, in the United States, he's been mostly ignored or else outright disparaged. Although he's one of the biggest punchers in the history of the division, Klitschko has also frequently relied on a cautious, jab-and-clinch style that bores North American crowds. 

So it's made sense for Klitschko to fight in Germany, where his bouts have the atmosphere of rock concerts. 

Still, for American fans of a certain age, it's been disappointing to see the heavyweight crown hold such marginal status. The situation has been worsened due to the fact that there has been a sorry lack of exciting American heavyweights. 

But Jennings is one of a few U.S. contenders to finally emerge. He has to be viewed as a significant underdog against the champ, but he's enough of a live dog to generate interest. 

If Klitschko handles Jennings as expected, it will hopefully pave the way for a unification fight with American Deontay Wilder, who captured the WBC portion of the title last January.

It's probably unlikely that the Ukrainian champion will ever truly become popular in the United States. But he might at least be able to finally get a portion of the respect that he deserves. 

In a March 18 interview with ABS-CBNNew.com's Camille B. Naredo, Manny Pacquiao's trainer, Freddie Roach, indicated his strategy for the big showdown between Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather would be to have his charge start fast and aggressively. 

"I want to take Mayweather out of his comfort zone right away," Roach said. 

It's the obvious approach to take, of course. Pacquiao has always been good at starting quickly, and Mayweather's ability to adjust to an opponent's style is legendary, making him very difficult to do anything against in the second half of a fight. 

So if Pacquiao is going to have a chance to land significant scoring blows on Mayweather, it might have to happen early. 

I expect some fans are going to want to point to Mayweather's first fight against Marcos Maidana, when the Argentine brawler made Mayweather very uncomfortable and arguably won the first half of the fight. Pacquiao supporters will want to say that if Maidana could do it, obviously a more talented fighter like Pacquiao will be able to do it too.

But Maidana weighed 162 pounds during that first fight. Pacquiao won't be within 15 pounds of that. He won't be able to physically bully Mayweather to the degree Maidana did.  

Just as Manny Pacquiao supporters are wrong to point to Marcos Maidana's limited success against Floyd Mayweather as the blueprint their own man can follow, Mayweather partisans are also misguided to point to Pacquiao's problems with Juan Manuel Marquez as definitive proof that beating Pacquiao will be a breeze for their own hero. 

Mayweather is a better boxer than Marquez, and they are both elite counterpunchers. But they are different types of counterpunchers. Marquez is an aggressive counterpuncher who has always been willing to roll the dice and put himself in potentially dangerous positions. 

Mayweather is a brilliant defensive fighter who lands punches like a sharpshooter. But a very fast, very busy southpaw like Pacquiao will present problems Mayweather has never faced before. Pacquiao's lead right hook is the ideal tool for neutralizing Mayweather's famed shoulder-roll defense. 

Mayweather is going to need to exchange punches at a higher rate than he's traditionally needed to. I'm already on record picking Mayweather to win.

But I'm not assuming it will be easy. Mayweather will likely need to show qualities he hasn't had to show before. 

Follow Briggs Seekins on Twitter at #Briggsfighttalk, and check out his boxing blog, Pioneers of Boxing, to read about the sport's early, bare-knuckle era.