By Dan Ambrose: Super bantamweight Robert Marroquin (22-2, 15 KO’s) will be moving up to featherweight to face Antonio Escalante (28-5, 19 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the WinStar Casino, in Thackerville, Oklahoma, USA. This will be a good test for the 23-year-old Marroquin, who is coming off of a 12 round unanimous decision loss to WBA World super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux last September.
Despite losing the fight by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision, Marroquin hurt Rigondeaux on a couple of occasions with hard left hooks to the head. Marroquin showed good power in that fight, and his big size advantage over Rigondeaux really helped his case. Unfortunately for Marroquin, he failed to throw enough punches to win and he ended up getting badly outworked by Rigondeaux.
At one time, Escalante was a really good super bantamweight and had a lot or promise, but starting with his 3rd round TKO loss to Daniel Ponce De Leon in September 2010, Escalante’s career has been doing downwards. Escalante was beaten by Alejandro Perez by a 1st round knockout in 2011, and in his last fight he was stopped in the 8th round by Rocky Juarez in October of last year.
That was a fight that Escalante should have won if he we going to do something in the featherweight division. He’s now no longer ranked in the top 15, and he’s obviously just the opponent for the 23-year-old Marroquin for this fight.
If Escalante loses the fight then he’s clearly going to be on his way to journeyman status, which is kind of hard to believe because he was a really good fighter just three years ago. He’s only 27-years-old, and he should in theory still be able to fight at a high level.
Marroquin is a bad match-up for Escalante due to his huge 5’8” size and big power. Escalante might be able to outwork Marroquin like Rigondeaux did, but it’s doubtful that he’ll be able to handle his power and pressure for long without getting knocked out.