By Jason Kim: On July 31st, unbeaten middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (20-0, 17 KO’s) will be taking his toughest fight of his young career against undefeated Russian Dmitry Pirog (16-0, 13 KO’s) on the undercard of the Juan Manuel Marquez vs. Juan Diaz bout at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Of all the fights on the card that night, the Pirog-Jacobs fight by far is the most interesting of the lot, and the fight I think that should be the main event. That’s no knock on the Diaz-Marquez fight, but I think boxing fans have already seen that bout early last year and I don’t see much point in having a rematch between them.
That’s like watching the rematch between George Foreman and Joe Frazier. You knew who was going to win and there was just no way that Frazier was going to win that fight after being dominated so badly in the first fight. The same thing applies to Diaz. He got beaten up my more experienced and much more talented fighter in Marquez. Now a year later, nothing has changed.
Diaz won’t have improved enough in that short of a time to beat Marquez. Both of those fighters have since been beaten in their fights. This is why I think the Marquez-Diaz fight doesn’t even belong on the top of the card. I would it at number #2, but only because the other fights – Robert Guerrero vs. Joel Casamayor and Jorge Linares vs. Rocky Juarez – are fights that are pretty much mismatches.
I like Casamayor and think he was a great fighter at point time, but he is 38 and is about to turn 39. That’s a little too old for him to beat a guy like Guerrero. And Rocky Juarez is going to get beaten up by Linares. He doesn’t have the speed or the power to compete with him. That fight won’t be competitive.
The Jacobs vs. Pirog fight will be incredibly competitive. Jacobs has looked great in most of his bouts going into this fight. The one fight where Jacobs struggled a little was against defensive wizard Ishe Smith last year in August. Jacobs had a hard time figuring out Smith’s style early in the fight, but once he had it figured out, he dominated the later rounds.
Jacobs’s opponent, the 30-year-old Pirog, is like a copy of Floyd Mayweather Jr. Pirog is very hard to hit and hard to defend against because he likes to throw a lot of punches. This is a fight that is hard to pick the winner in. In terms of power, Jacobs is the bigger puncher.
However, Pirog is the much busier fighter and is capable of throwing a lot of short punches that connect. Pirog can generate a lot of power with his short hooks. It doesn’t take him much space to load up on a shot and he’s got at throwing multiple hooks very quickly.
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