Cristian Mijares vs. Rafael Marquez tonight

By Boxing News - 10/27/2012 - Comments

By Jim Dower: Former world champions Cristian Mijares (46-6-2, 21 KO’s) will be fighting Rafael Marquez (41-7, 37 KO’s) tonight for the vacant WBC United States (USNBC) featherweight title at the Arena Cuidad de Mexico, Mexico City, Distrito Federal, Mexico. Also on the card will be former WBC light flyweight champion Edgar Sosa (46-7, 28 KO’s) taking on Myung Ho Lee (15-2, 5 KO’s) in a 10 round scheduled bout.

Mijares, a former IBF/WBA/WBC super flyweight champion, keeps moving up in weight from division to division but hasn’t been able to capture or even get title fights at bantamweight and super bantamweight. He’s now fighting at featherweight but isn’t ranked in that weight class as of yet. Not a big puncher even at super flyweight, Mijares is going to have problems at featherweight when he gets around to fighting someone good with power.

Marquez, 37, has definitely seen better days. He previously held the IBF bantamweight and WBC super bantamweight titles many years ago, but he’s been kind of out of the loop since winning the WBC Silver super bantamweight title in 2010. In fighting for major titles, Marquez has lost to Juan Manuel Lopez and Toshiaki Nishioka in the past two years.

It’s pretty obvious that Marquez doesn’t have the skills that he once had, but he can still punch with power. That might be enough to get him a win over Mijares if he put enough pressure on him early in the fight. Mijares used to be really good at making his opposition miss, but he’s slowed down and is a lot more hittable than he was in the past.

Marquez can win if he doesn’t run out of gas in the second half of the fight like he did in his loss to Nishioka. Mijares is there to be beaten but Marquez has got to pace himself so that he doesn’t lose it all of a sudden during the championship rounds of the fight.



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