There are a few questions going into the Juan Manuel Marquez – Juan Diaz II Pay-Per-View event on July 31.

Is this fight a worthy headliner for a Pay-Per-View card?  Is a full-fight card a gimmick to sell a poor headliner?  Is the undercard good enough to buoy the main event?

Many boxing critics and fans, including Ring Magazine (owned by Golden Boy Promotions) and Boxingscene.com, touted their first battle as fight of the year for 2009.  Following the match, both fighters had a disappointing second half to the year, with Juan Diaz (35-3, 17 KOs) splitting a fight apiece with Paulie Malignaggi (many thought Malignaggi won both) and Marquez (50-5, 37 KOs) ending up at the wrong end of a one-sided beat down against Floyd Mayweather.

With both fighters coming off of a loss, Golden Boy Promotion’s CEO Richard Schaefer has loaded the undercard with good, competitive fights.  The undercard features a bout in which two unbeaten bangers, Golden Boy prospect Danny Jacobs (20-0, 17 KOs), and Dmitry Pirog (16-0, 13KOs), face off for the vacant WBO Middleweight Title stripped from Sergio Martinez in June.  Jacobs, who has fought an astounding 20 times since making his professional debut two-and-half-years-ago on the Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton undercard, suffered the loss of his grandmother last weekend, but has vowed to fight.

Also on the undercard former champions and sparring partners Joel Casamayor and Robert Guerrero face off and Jorge Linares and Rocky Juarez do battle.

So at the time in the broadcast when you are potentially swilling brews to pass the time, commenting on how boring the undercard is, commenting on how exciting the main event might be or listening to a mixed martial arts fan tell you why your sport is dying, you should be, for the first time in a long time, watching a great card full of explosive fights.

The opinions on this Pay-Per-View card are varied, but have mainly veered towards the positive.

Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports, writing under the headline ‘Quality Undercard a Golden Opportunity’ began by lamenting the current state of boxing cards.

“Boxing fans are the most patient people on earth. We deal with zero free fights on network television,” Iole wrote.  “Not only do we have to buy cable to see the fights, we have to buy premium cable to see the stars fight.”

Iole went on to note, “On most pay-per-view undercards, the promoters could act like Major League Baseball and black the fights out, and probably 2 percent of the paying customers would notice. This time, there are fights that actually have intrigue.”  Iole ended with the thought that if most boxing fans do not dig into their pockets for this event, we should not expect the trend of a stacked undercard to continue.

SC on BadLeftHook.com concurred with Iole in regards to the quality of the undercard.

“If you’re going to spend money on one boxing Pay-Per-View for the rest of 2010, make it this card,” SC wrote. “I understand criticisms that perhaps Marquez-Diaz II shouldn’t be a headlining bout on pay-per-view, but the fact of the matter is, it’s a rematch of the 2009 Fight of the Year, and Golden Boy Promotions has stacked the undercard with meaningful, interesting fights across the board.”

There were those critics though who believed that a stacked undercard is no excuse for a headlining fight that does not deserve that moniker.

Chris Williams of Boxingnews24.com had his reservations about spending money on the card and questioned the worth of the main event.

“I think HBO is late on this one,” Williams wrote. “If they had fought immediately, say a month after their first fight, I’d be interested in seeing it. I wouldn’t want to pay a dime to see it, because these guys have been losing. But I wouldn’t mind seeing it then. But not now, not when both of them have been beaten in their last fights.”

If this fight sells it will not be on headliner alone.  The headliner is being supported by a solid foundation.  Instead of the usual, 3 undercard fights featuring 6 nobodies or 3 rising stars beating up 3 duds,  we have 3 undercard fights and 6 competitors.  This will attract the focus of a television audience and give the undercard fighters a build of character and storyline that will help not only the fighters but the promotional company down the line.

Let’s just hope this is not a one-time gimmick to sell a less-than-stellar main event.