Jaime Munguia fights Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan on Saturday the 11th at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. This will be Munguia’s first foray into the middleweight division and he’s been given a good name to start his run off with. O’Sullivan has fought three big names in the middleweight division in Billy Joe Saunders, Chris Eubank Jr and David Lemieux and while hes lost those fights it still means he has that big fight experience and it also makes him a good name.
A lot of people are calling this fight a mismatch and on paper perhaps it is however when you take into account that Munguia is 23 and doesn’t have a very good defence then this fight gets more interesting. You also have to take into account that this will likely be the last big opportunity that O’Sullivan will get in his career and at the age of 35 he’ll want to give this fight everything he has. Munguia still needs fights to develop as a fighter and unfortunately because he became a world champion so unexpectedly early in his career hes had to learn while fighting championship fights. If O’Sullivan can take Munguia’s power then this fight becomes very close and he has a good chance of winning. There isn’t a guarantee that Munguia’s power will still have the same effect when he steps up a weight class however for all we know he may be more powerful because he doesn’t have to drain himself to make weight. We’ve seen this happen with fighters such as Liam Williams who when he moved up in weight and went with a new trainer he improved massively. Munguia is doing the same with his new trainer being the legend Erik Morales.
If O’Sullivan wins then he gets the big fights going forward and could potentially lead to an all Irish world title fight with Luke Keeler, if Keeler can upset Andrade later this month. I don’t see this happening but it would be nice to see O’Sullivan have some career defining success towards the end of his so far 11 year run.
Now my actual prediction for this fight is that Munguia eventually wears down the older O’Sullivan and stops him in round 8 or 9 , I think O’Sullivan will win some rounds beforehand and this will mean people will continue to call Munguia a loss waiting to happen which to be fair the vast majority of fighters are. I like Munguia and I hope that under his new trainer he improves his defense as its not good that he takes so many shots in fights. I think theres a lot to like about a fighter thats all action , only 23 and already fought in 6 world title fights and I think that he gets too much criticism for his resume considering his age.
Boxing Fulcrum 