This is an excellent fight between two unbeaten lightweights who are trying to progress up the ranks and make a name for themselves. Frank Martin is 12-0 with 9 knockouts and is taking the biggest step up of his professional career after building a record mainly on the small hall scene. Jerry Perez is 13-0 with 10 knockouts and is also facing the toughest test of his professional career so far. Perez has appeared on a few big under cards but has also been traversing the small hall scene hoping for a big opportunity such as this one. This fight is headlining on Fox Sports in the USA which is a huge platform for these two unbeaten fighters. Both the winner and loser can expect to get bigger opportunity’s off of this fight.
Frank Martin is very much a boxer rather than a puncher and relies on his technical skills to win fights rather than hoping for one big punch to end things. He throws a lot of punches and has good hand speed which catches his opponents off guard. Like a Hyena he’ll jump in and out of range with raiding attacks and as his opponents start to tire he’ll go in more and more until he feels they are tired enough to go for the finish and at that point instead of combinations of three or four punches he’ll unload a vast arsenal of shots to finish the fight. His defence and footwork are good though he does tend to pull out in straight lines which opponents could and have taken advantage of. He’s never been past six rounds so this fight being a ten rounder is new territory for him and should test his stamina.
Jerry Perez is a boxer-puncher in my opinion who relies on his power more than his technical skills. He doesn’t throw a huge amount of punches and is very relaxed in the ring which sometimes lets opponents push him back to the ropes to easily. He does appear to have reasonable power though sometimes struggles to set it up as most of his punches from what I’ve seen are single shots or the occasional two or thee punch combination. I think his hand and foot speed are both significantly slower than Martin’s. His defence is reasonable but I don’t think Martin will struggle to land on him while Perez may struggle a little bit to land on Martin.
I think Frank Martin will win this fight by decision due to having both the faster hands and the better footwork. I also think his raiding style will work well against Perez who can be passive in the ring and not throw a lot of punches which the judges won’t like when they see Martin outworking him with consistent combinations. Jerry Perez’s best chance in this fight is to land a big counter punch and either knock Martin out or make him very hesitant to come into range. If he can make Martin worried about coming into range he can then dictate the fight and push Martin around the ring while landing the bigger punches.
Boxing Fulcrum 