By Dan Ambrose: Rather than face Jesus M Rojas again to try and clear up the mess left over from their unsatisfying 2nd round no contest last June, former four division world champion Jorge Arce (60-6-2, 46 KO’s) will reportedly be facing 33-year-old journeyman Rogers Mtagwa (27-15-2, 19 KO’s) on September 22ns in Puebla, Mexico.

This isn’t much of a tune-up for Arce, because the featherweight Mtagwa has lost three out of his last four fights with two of them being 2nd round knockout losses. This is a real mismatch for Arce, and I guess he’s taking it because he had so many problems in his last fight against Rojas. In that fight, Arce got a quick knockdown of the younger Rojas in the 1st round, but then Rojas completely took over the fight and was really pounding Arce until hitting him with a low blow followed by a shot to the back and a punch on the side of Arce’s head.

Arce went down from the three shots and couldn’t continue fighting because of pain in his ear. The shot that hit Arce in the ear was perfectly legal, but the low blow and back shots obviously wasn’t. However, Arce didn’t please a lot of boxing fans who saw him as quitting in a fight that he was starting to take a lot of punishment in. Had Arce been dominating when he went down with the injury then nobody would likely question him, but because he was starting to take a real pounding in the fight, a lot of fans think Arce pulled a quit job to avoid a knockout loss.

It’s bad that Arce at least isn’t trying to clear up the stink of that fight by facing Rojas again instead of someone like Mtagwa.

If Arce can get past Mtagwa then he’ll get a nice payday fight against IBF/WBO super bantamweight champion Nonito Donaire in either late December or early 2013.

Taking on a struggling fighter like Mtagwa just makes Arce look like he’s ducking Rojas, because that’s a fight that Arce really needs to clear up.