By Jim Dower: WBC super featherweight champion Miguel Berchelt (34-1, 30 KOs) will be defending his title against mandatory challenger Miguel ‘Mickey’ Roman (60-12, 47 KOs) on November 3 at the Don Haskins Convention Center in El Paso, Texas. The Berchelt vs. Roman fight will be televised on ESPN+. It’s not a bad fight for a subscription service that goes for $5 per month.
As good as Roman, 32, looked recently in winning his last four fights, he’s likely going to be out of his class fighting a prime fighter like Berchelt. Roman has turned his career around since losing to former WBC 130 pound champion Takashi Mirua by a 12h round knockout last year on January 28, 2017. Last December, Roman stopped Orlando Salido in the 9th round in what is clearly the biggest win of his 15-year pro career.
Roman has never won a world title despite having loads of talent. He’s just never been able to hang with the best fighters when he would attempt to step it up. Roman has losses to Miura, Dante Jardon, Antonio DeMarco, Jonathan Victor Barros, Javier Fortuna, Antonio Escalante, Miguel Berltran Jr. and Fernando Beltran. Roman has lost against the good fighters, and beaten a lot of talented B-level guys. It’s unlikely that Roman would have beaten Salido a few years ago when he was still fighting a t a high level, but he at least was still able to beat the 39-year-old to add his valuable name to his resume.
Now that Vasyl Lomachenko is fighting at lightweight, Berchelt has emerged as the best fighter in the super featherweight division. Berchelt still needs to prove that he can beat the likes of Alberto Machado, Tevin Farmer, Gervonta Davis and Masayuki Ito. Davis might be the biggest threat to Berchelt. However, making a fight between them may prove to be impossible right now. It’s likely that Davis will move up in weight to lightweight without ever facing Berchelt.
Berchelt looked great in 2017 in beating Miura and Francisco Vargas on HBO. Those fights made a name out of the 26-year-old Berchelt. Since then, however, Berchelt hasn’t done a whole lost in beating Maxwell Awaku and Jonathan Victor Barros. Those fights were didn’t do much in helping Berchelt increase his popularity. But on November 3, Berchelt finally has a good enough opponent in Roman to get him some attention from the boxing world. From there, Berchelt needs to keep moving forward to face the other champions in the division for him to help make him a star.
Berchelt figures to beat Roman, but it won’t be an easy fight. Roman is a tough opponent, who has suddenly become a puncher late in his career. Berchelt will need to box Roman if he wants to get out of the fight in one piece on November 3.