By Scott Gilfoid: #7 WBC Kevin Mitchell (38-2, 28 KOs) will be facing #6 WBC Daniel Estrada (32-3-1, 24 KOs) in a WBC lightweight title eliminator on January 31st on the Anthony Joshua vs. Kevin Mitchell card at the O2 Arena in London, UK.
Mitchell and his promoter Eddie Hearn believe that the 29-year-old Estrada, who was recently knocked out in his last fight by Omar Figueroa, is the best path to a title shot. Mitchell thinks he’s got what it takes to beat WBO lightweight champion Jorge Linares if given the chance.
Linares has always been a shaky fighter, and Mitchell feels that he stands a good chance of beating him Mitchell doesn’t say what he feels his chances would be against the other lightweight champions Richard Abril, Terence Crawford and Mickey Bey, but you have to figure that he doesn’t like his chances because he’s seemingly moving in the patch of the least resistance of going against the tougher options.
“The WBC route is one that I feel I can go down better than any of the others,” said Mitchell via Skysports.com. “I know that I can beat Linares. I believe I would knock him out and take that title. Eddie Hearn puts the fighters in front of me and I take them out, that’s the deal.”
Mitchell is coming off of an 11th round knockout win over Ghislain Maduma last year in May. The fight was an IBF lightweight eliminator bout, but Mitchell blew it by coming in over the weight limit during the day of the fight secondary weigh-in. By coming in overweight, Mitchell didn’t have a chance to become the IBF mandatory even though he won the fight.
It goes without saying that Mitchell looked horrible in that fight for the first 10 rounds. He was awful in getting beaten to the punch and totally dominated by the much faster Maduma. However, in the 11th round Maduma gassed out badly and this enabled Mitchell to take over the fight to get a stoppage win.
Estrada looked powerful in his last fight against Figueroa, and he was on his way to winning when he was stopped suddenly by Figueroa in the 9th. Before the knockout, Estrada was beating the stuffing out of Figueroa in the first 8 rounds of the fight and he looked really good.
There are arguably far better fighters than Estrada in the lightweight division in terms of contenders, so Mitchell has a shot to win this fight. It’s a guy who hits hard but who is beatable. Mitchell is a pretty flawed fighter though, and you can never tell what you’re going to get with the guy. He could either win or go to pieces like he did against Ricky Burns and Michael Katsidis.
Comments are closed.