By Tony Krebs: In a night of disappointing performances by young prospects, undefeated featherweight Matt Remillard (13-0, 7 KOs) continued with the poor performances by defeating Colombian veteran Jesus Salvador Perez by a 4-round unanimous decision on Friday night at the Mohegan Sun Casino, in Uncasville, Connecticut. The final judges’ scores were 40-35, 40-35 and 39-36, for the 21 year-old Remillard. However, I had Remillard squeaking by with a narrow decision over the 35 year-old Perez, who was the much busier and exciting fighter.
Perez, who came into the fight having lost 18 out of his last 25 bouts obviously brought in as an opponent to make Remillard look good against, took the fight to him in the first round and was doing well with a strong right hand attack. In fact, Perez was dominating almost the entire round when suddenly Remillard unleashed a powerful left hook that dropped Perez to the canvas. It seemed as if Remillard was playing possum for most of the round, saving up his strength to land one big punch that he could surprise Perez with.
If that was his strategy, it worked to perfection, for Perez was not nearly for that kind of sudden power form Remillard, who looked very average as a fighter up until that moment in the round. However, Remillard did little to try and finish Perez off after he climbed off the canvas.
In the second round, Perez did a good job of smothering Remillard, staying in close to him and preventing him from getting off his power shots. While at the same time, Perez, and excellent inside fighter, landed a huge amount of wide shots to the head of Remillard. It was a round that clearly went to Perez.
Perez continued pouring it on in the third as he attacked Remillard with nonstop punches and found it quite easy to him, especially with right hand shots to the head. Remillard did next to nothing in the round, other than taking shots from Perez. Every time he’d get ready to throw a punch of his own, Perez would ram three punches down his throat and cause him to cover up and try to wait out the storm of shots.
Remillard came back in the 4th round and landed well with some big shots. However, Perez made it close due to his high volume of punches thrown and landed in the round. The biggest punches, though, were thrown by Remillard, who appeared to do enough to possibly win the round.
Overall, bad performance for a prospect as hyped as much as Remillard. He looks quite average as a fighter and I don’t see him as a future champion. His power is good, however, but he takes too much punishment and doesn’t thrown nearly enough punches for a featherweight.