By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World super featherweight champion Jason Sosa (19-1-4, 15 KOs) will be looking to score a knockout this Saturday night when he faces #11 IBF fringe contender Stephen Smith (24-2, 14 KOs) at the Salle des Etoilles, in Monte Carlo, Monaco.
Sosa, 28, wants to get an impressive knockout over the 31-year-old Smith. Sosa has got the perfect opponent for him to get a highlight reel KO on Saturday night in my view, because Smith likes to slug it out, even when it’s not in his best interest to do so.
If Smith’s trainer doesn’t have him on his bike this Saturday night, we could see him get royally smashed in two or three rounds. Sosa is a wrecking machine right now, and there isn’t anyone that has been able to stand up to him and beat him at his own game in the last five years of his boxing career.
The only guy that got the better of Sosa was Tre-Sean Wiggins, who stopped him in the 1st round in September 2010. It would be interesting to see how Wiggins would do against Sosa now, because he’s improved a great deal since that loss. Wiggins’ career has failed to take off unfortunately
Smith hasn’t done much to deserve a second world title shot after his 12 round unanimous decision loss to International Boxing Federation World super featherweight champion Jose Pedraza last April. Smith has fought once since that time in beating Argentinian journeyman Daniel Eduardo Brizuela by a 7th round knockout last May.
This is the same Brizuela who was knocked out in just one round in his last fight by knockout artist Matias Carlos Adrian Rueda (27-1, 24 KOs) last Saturday night in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Rueda can really punch. He’s a dangerous guy, but flawed. Oscar Valdez blasted Ruedas out in two rounds last July to capture the vacant World Boxing Organization featherweight title.
“It could come down to a war,” said Sosa to skysports.com. “We’ll see how he comes out and then we will adjust and go from there. We try to stay pretty, not just box in your face. We want to go for the stoppage; we want to look impressive and sharp. It’s the first defense so we want to look very good.”
I’d be very surprised if Smith comes out trying to slug with Sosa. Smith and his trainer have had enough time to study Sosa’s past fights to know that it’s not going to work if they try and punch with him. Sosa got the better of former WBA featherweight champion Nicholas Walters in the slugging department in their fight last December.
Walters was forced to start boxing Sosa after the 6th round of that match, because he was getting nailed repeatedly by heavy shots. Walters did a good job of rallying to get a draw out of the fight, but he clearly failed at trying to KO Sosa. Smith isn’t in the same class as Walters or Sosa in the power and slugging department. That’s why I would be highly surprised if Smith even tries to punch with him early on. I do think Smith will revert to his normal brawling style of fighting by the 4th or 5th round, because his brawling style is too well ingrained at this point in his career. He’s not going to be able to change his basic nature to want to punch it out with his opponents.
“I fought Nicholas Walters, a world champion and one of the most feared at 126lbs, then I fought Fortuna who had never been stopped and I ended up knocking him out, so I do believe I have fought better competition than Smith,” said Sosa.
Sosa fought well in scoring an 11th round knockout over Javier Fortuna last June to capture his WBA title. Sosa had to get up off the canvas in the 5th round to come back to KO Fortuna in the 11th. Sosa showed a lot of heart and determination to keep slogging ahead after things looked bleak for him in the 5th round.
Sosa had to put a lot of pressure on Fortuna to get the KO, because he was moving all around the ring. I Smith tries to use a lot of movement on Saturday night, I see him failing to win the fight because Sosa does a good job of cutting off the ring to get the knockout. Sosa never gave up in that fight, as he was trailing on all three of the judges’ scorecards by the scores of 96-91 95-92 and 94-93 at the time of the stoppage in the 11th.
Also on the Sosa vs. Smith card is heavyweight contender Luis “King Kong” Ortiz facing Malik Scott for the vacant WBA Inter-Continental heavyweight title, super middleweight contender Martin Murray facing Dmitri Chudinov in a 12 round fight, and WBA World bantamweight champion Jamie McDonnell defending his title against Liborio Solis.