By Sean Jones: It appears the big announcement by K2 Promoter Ton Loeffler is the super flyweight contest between WBC 115 lb. champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (44-4-1, 40 KOs) and mandatory challenger Juan Francisco Estrada (36-2m 25 KOs) for the SuperFly2 card on February 24th at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
This is the main event for the SuperFly2 card. There’s expected to be a number of top fighters on the undercard such as WBO super flyweight champion Naoya Inoue, WBA champion Khalid Yafai, IBF champion Jerwin Acajas, as well as former WBC champion Carlos Cuadras.
Rungvisai is on his way to becoming a big star in the U.S and replacing Roman Gonzalez. If Rungvisai can keep winning, he could quickly eclipse the popularity that Chocolatito had going for him. HBO is really high on Rungvisai right now. They want to keep bringing him back because of his crowd-pleasing style of fighting.
Former 4 division world champion Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez isn’t expected to take part in the card. Loeffler is talking about wanting to have Chocolatito fight on the undercard of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Gennady Golovkin rematch on May 5 if the fight takes place on that date. Gonzalez’s career is in dire straits after losing consecutive fights to Rungvisai. It’s important that Gonzalez win his next fight for him to keep his career afloat.
The Rungvisai vs. Estrada fight news isn’t the one that the boxing fans were hoping to hear. The fans want to know when/if Golovkin and Canelo will be fighting on May 5th or not. The fans already knew that Rungvisai and Estrada, 27, would be fighting in February. The announcement of that fight on Saturday was hardly earth shattering news to the fans. It’s a great fight though, but it’s not what the fans wanted to hear.
Former WBA/WBC flyweight champion Juan Estrada barely squeaked by Carlos Cuadras last September in beating him by a narrow 12 round unanimous decision at SuperFly1 at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. The ring announcer mistakenly announced that Cuadras had won the fight. Cuadras then started celebrating like crazy. Moments later, the ring announcer corrected himself in announcing that Estrada had won the fight by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113. Not surprisingly, Cuadras was upset. The way Estrada fought against Cuadras, he’s going to have a tough time trying to defeat Rungvisai, who is looking very hard to beat right now.
Rungvisai hasn’t lost a fight in 3 years since losing to Cuadras by an 8th round technical decision. Cuadras was boxing the entire time in that fight, using a hit, run and hold style to keep from mixing it up with Rungvisai. It worked well for Cuadras until he suffered a cut over his left eyebrow from a clash of heads in round 7. The fight then went to the scorecards, and Cuadras was given the victory. The way that Rungvisai is fighting now, Cuadras would have a tough time being effective using the same spoiling approach.