By Allan Fox: Former WBA/WBO flyweight champion Juan Francisco Estrada (36-3, 25 KOs) weighed in at 114.4 pounds for his fight against Felipe Orucuta (36-4, 30 in their World Boxing Council super flyweight title eliminator in SuperFly3 on Saturday night at the Forum in Inglewood, California. The 32-year-old Orucutu weighed in at 114 pounds.
This is the first fight for the 28-year-old Estrada since his loss to WBC super flyweight champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai last February. Estrada gave Rungvisai a lot of problems in rallying in the late rounds, but he didn’t do enough get the victory. Estrada will need to fight a lot harder earlier in the fight on Saturday night for him to defeat #7 WBC Orucutu. The good news for Estrada is Orucutu isn’t anywhere near the same class as Rungvisai, so he should be able to get through this fight without suffering another loss.
The winner of the Estrada vs. Orucutu fight will be the mandatory challenger to Rungvisai. I don’t think that’s a good idea for Estrada to fight Rungvisai so soon, as there’s a good chance he’ll lose to him again. Estrada wasn’t able to stand up to Rungvisai in most of the rounds, so he should think about going in another direction rather than facing him again. The power difference between those two fighters was too vast for Estrada to have a good chance of beating him in the rematch.
Former three division world champion Donnie Nietes (41-1-4, 23 KOs) weighed in at 114.8 pounds for his fight against #2 WBO Aston Palicte (24-2, 20 KOs) in their fight for the vacant World Boxing Organization super flyweight title. Palicte, 27, weighed in at 114.6 pounds. The 36-year-old Nietes is the guy to beat in this fight. Nietes recently vacated his IBF flyweight title last April. Nietes vacated his WBO light flyweight title in August 2016. Nietes held that title for five years from 2011 to 2016. Before that, Nietes held the WBO minimumweight title from 2007 to 2011.
Nietes is looking really good right now. He has recent wins over Juan Carlos Reveco, Komgrich Nantapech, Edgar Sosa and Raul Garcia. It’s too bad Naoya Inoue vacated his WBO super flyweight title to move up to bantamweight. It would have been interesting to see Inoue defend against Nietes. That would have been a far more interesting fight than Nietes vs. Palicte.
Former three division world champion Kazuto Ioka (22-1, 13 KOs) weighed in at 114.6 pounds for his fight against WBC Silver super flyweight champion McWilliams Arroyo (17-3, 14 KOs). For his part, the 32-year-old Arroyo weighed in at 114.4 pounds
Other weights on the card:
Alexandru Marin 115.2 vs. Bruno Escalante 114.2
Brenda Flores 102.4 vs. Louisa Hawton 101.8