By Scott Gilfoid: Lightweight John Murray (33-2, 20 KO’s) will be looking to score a knockout tonight against the light-hitting Anthony Crolla (27-4-1, 10 KO’s) to add his scalp to his growing collection at the Phones 4u Arena in Manchester, UK. Murray plans on knocking Crolla out in order to make sure he gets his hand raised tonight. Murray doesn’t want to wind up losing a controversial decision if the fight goes to the scorecards.
The outcome of this fight has huge ramifications, as they’re likely to face former WBO lightweight champion Ricky Burns next in a nice payday fight in Glasgow, Scotland. Murray vs. Burns would be a great contest, because Burns looks like he’s on his last legs at this point in his career and Murray could be the one that sends him packing.
Crolla will be trying to jab his way to a win tonight, and I suspect we’re going to see a lot of movement from him like we did in his rematch against Derry Mathews. If Murray is on his job he’ll make sure that he cuts off the ring on Crolla to force him to fight for a full three minutes of every round instead of just a small fraction.
The key for Murray tonight is to throw as many body punches as possible to test Crolla’s ability to take it downstairs. I doubt that Crolla will be able to go more than a handful of rounds before he tastes the canvas for the first time courtesy of a rib crunching body shot. Once Crolla hits the deck the first time, he’ll likely keep doing repeatedly until the referee finally pulls the plug on the fight.
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The main event fight between WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg (27-0-2, 20 KO’s) and Tshifhiwa Munyai (24-2-1, 12 KO’s) should probably be the co-feature bout or the third from the headliner because this is not an interesting matchup in my view, but I still think it’ll be a good fight.
Munyai has excellent power and an ability to put his punches together like he did in his fight against Christian Esquivel four years ago. That was one of the most exciting fights I’ve seen. Munyai took some terrible punishment, but he was still able to come back again and again to nail Esquival with dozens of punches to the head. You’ve got to give Esquival credit for being able to take the terrifying head shots that Munyai was nailing him with.
I see the Quigg-Munyai as a 50-50 fight. I can’t really pick a winner because Quigg is too flawed, and Munyai is a shaky fighter with a tendency to get backed up too much on the ropes. Munyai has a great chin, but I’m not sure how well he’ll be able to take body shots tonight.
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