By Francisco Hernandez: The final of Showtime’s bantamweight tournament will happen on April 23, 2011 at Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, with Abner Mares fighting Joseph Agbeko. Mares faces a tough test against Agbeko. In his last fight Abner Mares wasn’t able to figure out the style of his opponent Vic Darchinyan. Mares pressed forward but ate a lot of punches from Darchinyan. Mares landed few convincing punches.

Against Agbeko, Mares will be facing a younger and faster opponent than was Vic Darchinyan. Agbeko will give Mares problems because Agbeko like Darchinyan has an unorthodox style of fighting, Mares will have problems trying to figure out his style. Mares has the bad habit of changing trainers every full moon, he might have to make yet another change in his corner because they are not providing any help to Mares in finding the right strategy to fight unorthodox opponents, they may not know what they’re doing.

If Mares manages to win against Agbeko he was hoping to fight Fernando Montiel and Nonito Donaire. Mares will have to move to super-bantamweight to fight Montiel. Mares could probably give Vic Darchinyan a rematch, although not many fans want to watch that fight again because it would be a repeat of their first fight, I don’t see both fighters doing anything different to make a difference.

If Mares gets past Agbeko and cannot get a shot at Montiel or Donaire, then the most exciting fight left for Mares is to fight Hozumi Hasegawa, a dangerous Nippon fighter, who looked invincible until Fernando Montiel applied anesthesia on him. If Mares moves up to super-bantamweight he could fight highly regarded prospect Tomoki “el Mexicanito” Kameda. Kameda wants to fight like a Mexican, so the Japanese kid decided to train and fight out of Mexico; he is building a fan base in Mexico because of his aggressive no nonsense style of fighting. Against these two men from the land of the rising sun, Abner Mares will not need to figure out their style because they are going to come straight at him to take his head off. Eventually if Mares can be successful, he can face off against Fernando Montiel at super-bantamweight.

But first Abner Mares has to get past Joseph Agbeko, not an easy thing.