By Allan Fox: A purse bid has been scheduled for March 4 for WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia’s title defense against mandatory challenger Dennis Hogan (28-1-1, 7 KOs). For his next bout, the hard hitting Munguia (32-0, 26 KOs) will be fighting on April 13 at the Arena Monterrey, in Monterrey, Mexico. It’s a good venue for Munguia vs. Hogan to take place. This could be a war from start to finish.
This fight might be a step down for Munguia from his last three successful title defenses against Takeshi Inoue, Brandon Cook and Liam Smith. Those aren’t great fighters, but Hogan could be even below them due to his lack of punching power. Munguia’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have received a lot of criticism from boxing fans for the way they’ve matched him so carefully since he won the World Boxing Organization junior middleweight title last year with a fourth round knockout win over Sadam Ali.
Munguia is still young, and he still needs experience before he takes on the better opposition in the junior middleweight division. As the WBO champion, it’s not the ideal position to be in for him to be brought along slowly. Champions are supposed to fight the best, and not be seemingly coddled. Unfortunately, even the highly experienced fighters and champions take on a lot of soft opposition.
Munguia looks to be a good fighter, but he’s not had a true test since he captured the WBO 154 lb title last year. In three fights as the WBO champion, Munguia has beaten Liam Smith, Brandon Cook and Takeshi Inoue fairly easily. Of the three, Inoue gave Munguia the most problems, but only because of his aggressiveness, and his ability to take the punishment that he was receiving. That fight showed that even an over-matched opponent with little punching power can be a nightmare for a champion if sticks around the entire fight, and never stops attacking. Surprisingly, Munguia took a lot of punishment against Inoue. can’t say anything about Munguia for taking the Hogan fight. It’s the WBO that ranked Hogan #1 in their rankings. This isn’t a situation where Golden Boy selected Hogan.
If Hogan, 33, is going to be his opponent for Munguia’s scheduled April 13 date, he’ll likely have already started training camp to get ready for the fight date.
Hogan, who goes by the nickname, ‘Hurricane,’ was born in Kildare, Ireland, and he now lives in Australia. He had an extensive amateur career in Ireland before he turned pro eight years ago in 2011. Since turning professional, Hogan’s best wins have come against Tyrone Brunson, Jimmy’ Kilrain Kelly and Jamie Weetch.
The high ranking the WBO has given Hogan is likely based solely on his 12 round unanimous decision win over contender Kilrain Kelly in April of last year. That’s really the only victory over a true contender. Brunson is a fighter that started his career out with a lot of wins, but his career started going downhill a decade ago as son as he started fighting talented contenders. The one fight in which Hogan stepped up against Jack Culcay in 2015, he lost a wide 12 round unanimous decision. Culcay had too much skill for Hogan.
This should be another good showcase fight for Munguia. With Hogan having very little power to speak of, Munguia can use the match to work on different things in his game to help him improve for when he has to fight better opposition in the future. Julian ‘J-Rock-Williams is ranked #2 by the World Boxing Organization. He’s going to be a tough fight for Munguia in the near future, as is #4 WBO Kell Brook. Munguia has the offensive skills to win those fights, but it’s not going to be easy. Williams and Brook can punch, and they have a ton of experience. Munguia will have to dig deep to beat those two warriors when the time comes. If Munguia is lucky, the WBO won’t order him to fight Williams for another two years. With Munguia getting his WBO mandatory out of the way against Hogan this year, it could be a while before hie next mandatory defense is due.