By Dan Ambrose: It’s now official that WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia (32-0, 26 KOs) will be making his next mandatory defense against #1 WBO Dennis Hogan (28-1-1, 7 KOs) on April 13 on DAZN at the Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico.
Munguia’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions agreed to terms with the management of the 33-year-old Hogan for the World Boxing Organization’s ordered mandatory defense for Jaime. There was a purse bid that was scheduled for March 4, but it’s now been cancelled due to the agreement between Golden Boy and Hogans promoters.
To say that the boxing world is disinterested in the Munguia vs. Hogan fight is putting it mildly. The fans have zero interest in see Munguia involved in a mismatch like this one. If this fight was out of the norm for the 22-year-old Munguia, then the fans wouldn’t mind so much, but this is the norm for him. Munguia has been taking easy title defenses since he won the WBO title last year in beating Sadam Ali.
This will be defense No.4 for the 22-year-old Munguia of his WBO 154 lb title. Here are the three previous successful title defenses for Munguia:
– Liam Smith
– Brandon Cook
– Takeshi Inoue
In Munguia’s last fight against the tough as nails Takeshi Inoue, he got all he could handle from the Japanese fighter in winning a hard fought 12 round unanimous decision on January 26 in Houston, Texas. That was a fight that was closer than the wide scores turned in by the three judges, who had it 119-109, 120-108 and 120-108. Boxing News 24 scored it for Munguia by nine rounds to three score. Munguia won, but each round was a grueling affair for him, as he had to take a lot of shots to get the better of Inoue.
Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez views Hogan as a guy that will be looking to engage with Munguia, and slug it out. With a KO percentage of just 23%, it might not be the wisest thing for the 33-year-old Hogan to do. He’s the older fighter. If Hogan doesn’t fight smart, he’s going to get taken apart by Munguia just like Sadam Ali and Brandon Cook both were.
“He’s a very tough fighter and it’s going to make for a good fight because he is a pressure fighter who likes to come forward and be aggressive like Munguia does,” Gomez said to ESPN.com.
The Australia based Hogan has put together a winning four-year winning streak since getting beaten by Jack Culcay by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2015. That’s the good news. The bad news is Hogan’s wins since that fight have been against less than world beaters. These are the fighters that Hogan has beaten since the Culcay fight: Angel Hernandez, Samuel Colomban, Yao, Yi Ma, Yuki Nonaka, ‘Jimmy’ Kilrain Kelly and Jamie Weetch. Those guys are obviously not the type of fighters that you would normally see as guys that would earn a contender a title shot. There are a number of contenders in the WBO’s top 15 that would be more suitable to be challengers to Munguia than Hogan. Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams, Carlos Adames, and Kell Brook. Would be far better options to be challenging Munguia for his WBO title, but they weren’t ranked number one by the sanctioning body. The WBO saw something in Hogan that made them decide that he would be a good fighter to rank at #1.
This might be the last year for the 5’11” Munguia to be fighting at junior middleweight. Golden Boy wants Munguia to fight four times in 2019, and then potentially move up to 160 in 2020. They want to match Munguia against WBA/WBC middleweight champion Saul Canelo Alvarez. It’s a good idea that Golden Boy move Munguia at the end of this year, because the next WBO mandatory is expected to be J-Rock Williams, and he might lose to him. It’s better that if Munguia is going to lose to someone, it should be Canelo. Right now, Golden Boy can’t fully protect Munguia from the talented contenders, because he’s the WBO 154 lb belt holder. They can steer Munguia around the talented contenders as long as he has voluntary defenses available to him, but once he has to defend against a tough contender like J-Rock, then Golden Boy will need to move him up to 160 so that he doesn’t take a loss to J-Rock. As long as Munguia doesn’t get stubborn about holding onto the WBO title, then he should be alright next year when it’s time to move him up in weight to the next division. There are a lot of lions that want to fight Munguia at 154. They see a guy that’s not ready to be a world champion, but who is holding a belt only because he beat a weak champion in Sadam Ali, and he’s had soft contenders that he’s been able to defend against.