Miguel Berchelt vs. Jason Sosa – official weigh-in results

By Boxing News - 11/02/2019 - Comments

By Chris Williams: WBC super featherweight champion Miguel ‘El Alacran’ Berchelt (36-1 32 KOs) weighed in at 129.8 pounds on Friday for his voluntary defense against #4 WBC Jason Sosa (23-3-4, 16 KOs) on Saturday night.

Sosa weighed in at 128.2 lbs. Neither fighter had problems on the scales today, but that’s expected as both fighters are professionals and don’t slip up in amateurish ways like we saw from WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev for his weigh-in on Friday for his title defense against Saul Canelo Alvarez.

Berchelt vs. Sosa will be shown on ESPN and ESPN deportes from the Dignity Health Sports Park, in Carson, California.

Berchelt making his sixth defense

This will be Berchelt’s sixth defense of his WBC belt, and likely one of the easiest. Sosa’s record in his last five fights is a woeful 3-2. The combined records for Sosa’s last three opponents is 58-25. You get the picture, right? Sosa has stopped losing because his opposition has gotten poor to the extreme.

This isn’t a fight that boxing fans wanted to see from the 27-year-old Berchelt. They want to see the Mexican native step it up against the likes of Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis, Oscar Valdez, Jamel Herring, Andrew Cancio and Vasiliy Lomachenko. Sosa is basically the same level of weak opposition Berchelt has been consistently facing since he captured the WBC 130 lb title two years ago against a shot Francisco Vargas.

Berchelt has been a professional for 9 years, and he STILL hasn’t had one career defining fight against an elite level super featherweight. You can’t count Vargas, because he was already over-the-hill when Berchelt fought him in 2017. Vargas was coming off of a HIGHLY controversial 12 round draw against Orlando Salido in June 2016 when he fought Berchelt in 2017.

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Berchelt’s best career win against Francisco Vargas

Vargas was beat up by Salido for 12 rounds, and he deserved to win all of 2 rounds in their writer’s view of the fight. That was one of the worst defenses I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot. Before that, Vargas had through a terrible war against knockout artist Takashi Miura in stopping him in the 9th round in November 2015. That was a fight in which both fighters hit the deck.

Yeah, Vargas won the battle, but he ultimately lost the war because he was in bad shape when he fought Salido in 2016. Salido put it on Vargas so bad that the referee should have considered stopping the fight due to the one-sided nature.

So what we’re talking about here is Berchelt’s best win of his career coming against a played out Vargas, and other than that, he’s fought nobody. Sosa is a HUGE step down from the 34-year-old Vargas, and he’s not even a good fighter.

Berchelt: Sosa won’t be able to handle my power

“We come with an excellent preparation, and ready to win as the fight comes to us,” said Berchelt to ESPN Deportes. “If Sosa comes to stop to fight, we will give a great fight but he will not endure my power, and if he comes to run, I will reach it, and we will overcome it. Anyway, the title returns to Mexico,” said Berchelt.

There’s little question that Sosa won’t be able to handle the punching power from Berchelt, but that’s purely academic. Sosa is COMPLETELY out of his class in fighting Berchelt, and that’s the whole problem with this fight. Berchelt should be fighting better opposition than Sosa, because he’s doing what Terence Crawford is doing. Crawford is in the same boat as Berchelt in having fought 10 years as a pro without one career defining fight.

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Sosa has a reputation for being a slugger from his three fights the following guys:

  • Stephen Smith
  • Javier Fortuna
  • Nicholas Walters

Those matches took place in 2015 & 2016, which were zenith of Sosa’s career. During that time, he beat Fortuna by  an 11th round knockout in June 2016 to capture the World Boxing Association super featherweight title. Unfortunately, Sosa was only able to successfully defend his WBA title once in beating Stephen Smith by a 12 round unanimous decision in November 2016.

Sosa has been on a downhill run since 2017

It’s been all downhill for Sosa since then with him losing his WBA title to Vasiliy Lomachenko by a 9th round stoppage in April 2017, and then getting schooled by Yuriorkis Gamboa in a 10 round majority decision in November 2017. While Sosa has won his last three fights, the victories have come against fodder level opposition in Reynaldo Blanco, Moises Delgadillo and Haskell Lydell Rhodes.

Other weights on the Berchelt vs. Sosa card:

Javier Molina 141 vs. Hiroki Okada 140.8
Alex Saucedo 139.6 vs. Rod Salka 140.4
Gor Yeritsyan 147.8 vs. Shoki Sakai 146
Daniel Lewis 155.6 vs. Alexis Gaytan 159
Raymond Muratalla 135 vs. Arnulfo Becerra 133.8
Ruben Rodriguez 141.8 vs. Abram Martinez 142
Elvis Rodriguez 140.4 vs. Luis Norambuena 137.4

Light welterweight Alex Saucedo (28-1, 18 KOs) has a real mismatch on his hands in facing 36-year-old Rod Salka (24-5, 4 KOs) in an eight round fight on the card. This fight isn’t remotely fair, as Salka is little more than a feather-fisted journeyman, who hasn’t fought in a year and a half since being stopped by Fernandez Vargas in April 2018.

While it’s true that Saucedo was stopped in the 7th round in November 2018 by former World Boxing Organization light welterweight champion Maurice Hooker, he’s still way better than Salka. Obviously, you want to give Saucedo a confidence builder, but this ridiculous and hardly sporting.