By Allan Fox: #2 WBC Mike Perez (21-2, 13 KOs) went into Friday’s WBC heavyweight eliminator bout against Alexander Povetkin (29-1, 21 KOs) with the possibility of winning the fight and becoming the mandatory challenger to WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder.
A victory over Povetkin would had led to the 29-year-old Perez getting a nice payday against Wilder, and given him a shot at winning the WBC world title. But after getting blitzed by Povetkin in losing by a 1st round knockout, Perez’s career is not looking good at this point.
The defeat for Perez was his second loss in his last three fights, and he’s quite fortunate that he doesn’t three 3 losses in his last 4 fights. Perez’s fight against Carlos Takam last January, which resulted in a 10 round draw, looked more like a loss for Perez than a draw. Perez was very lucky not to have been given a defeat in the Takam fight because many boxing fans felt that Perez lost.
Povetkin highlighted Perez’s vulnerabilities last night when he hurt Perez on the inside with a right hand to the head that dropped him. Perez is not a good inside fighter, and should have known that he needed to tie Povetkin up when he was in close the same way that Wladimir Klitschko did each time the Russian fighter would get close to him.
Without the height or the reach to compete with the best heavyweights in the division, Perez is going to find it difficult for him to compete against the better heavyweights in the division. At the same time, he’s too big to melt off weight to move down to the cruiserweight division to try and compete in that weight class. If Perez was more slender, he might be able to trim off some fat and get down to 200. But Perez weighed in at 240 pounds during Thursday’s weigh-in with Povetkin, and there’s simply no way that Perez will be able to lose 40 pounds to get down to the cruiserweight division.
Even if Perez did get down to 200, he would likely be so skinny and weak that he wouldn’t be able to compete. With that said, Perez would help himself greatly if he lost some of the extra weight that he’s carrying around so that he could be more agile and able to fight hard for a full 12 rounds instead of just 6. Perez looks like he’s carrying around at least 25 pounds of excess weight that needs to be shed.
If Perez can lose the weight, he could be a decent heavyweight at around 215 pounds. It’s really small for a heavyweight, but that’s roughly how much Perez weighs when you take off all the excess fat that he’s carrying around on his frame. However, I’m not sure if it’s realistic to assume that Perez will lose the fight. If it was that easy, he would have lost it during this training camp. He obviously is having problems getting his weight down, and I don’t think that’s going to improve as he gets older.
Perez can still be a decent contender as long as he fixes his defense, and makes sure that he doesn’t drop his guard when he gets in close with his opponents like he did against Povetkin. Perez can still probably beat most of the top contenders in the division, but he’s going to have to fix his leaky defense for him to do that.
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