By Sam Volz: Former WBO junior middleweight champion Jaime Munguia and his opponent Sergiy Derevyanchenko both weighed in at 167.4 lbs at Friday’s weigh-in for their 12 round clash in the super middleweight division in this Golden Boy promoted show.
(Photo credit: Cris Esqueda/Golden Boy Promotions)
This is a must-win for 37-year-old Derevyanchenko because he’s come up empty repeatedly in the last three years. With only one victory in his last four fights, Derevyanchenko (14-4, 10 KOs) must find a path to victory on Saturday night against the much bigger & younger 26-year-old Munguia.
The event starts at 8:00 p.m. ET on DAZN from the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California.
Despite having a 41-0 record, Munguia has been a huge disappointment to fans, as he’s a textbook example of someone with a failure to launch syndrome.
Munguia has been so protected during the ten-year professional career that he’s failed to become a star, and his fights slip under the radar, ignored by boxing fans as if he were just another one of the many obscure fighters.
Munguia’s recent wins:
- Gonzalo Gaston Coria
- Jimmy Kelly
- D’Mitrius Ballard
- Gabriel Rosado
- Kamil Szeremeta
“I’m saying he is stepping into that journeyman status. Yeah, but
think about a guy stepping in, but he has one foot in,” said Akin Reyes to DAZN Boxing Show about Sergiy Derevyanchenko.
“He has the opportunity to step back out of that journeyman status towards contender championship status with this win, but he has one foot in and one foot out if he gets stopped by Jaime Munguia; I would title him a journeyman.”
“Okay, maybe if he gets stopped, but understand something. Derevyanchenko was in the middleweight division,” said Barak Bess. “At that time, that was a very, very hard division to get a belt in. You got GGG, [Jermall] Charlo, but Charlo got his belt later, but you got Canelo.
“So if you can’t beat those guys, you can’t be a champion. There are so many guys in the history of boxing that they’re going to die a champion because there were so many belts, and they were able to beat lesser
opponents to become a champion.
“So I just wouldn’t label him [Derevyanchenko] like that when he
had a tough close fight with GGG.”
“How long ago was that?” said Akin.
“What I’m saying is that means he’s past that level of journeyman. That means he’s a good fighter. He’s a past contender, and he’s a really, really good fighter, a title challenger that almost won [against Golovkin]. The only guy that really, really hurt GGG visibly.
“There’s a reason why Jaime Munguia is a -475 for this fight, and Derevyanchenko is a +330,” said Reyes.
“That’s because he’s 37 years old now, and he just lost to Carlos Adames, he lost to [Jermall] Charlo, and he lost to GGG,” said Bess.
“Journeymen usually start being journeymen in their late 30s,” said Reyes.
“Okay, so that means Roy Jones Jr was a journeyman in his old age,” said Bess.
“You’re talking about an anomaly. You’re talking about one in a million,” said Reyes.
“Because in the later part of his career, he was losing to some people who would never even be in the same ring as him years ago. That never makes a man a journeyman,” said Bess.
“Roy lost abruptly. I mean, his superpowers just kind of vanished overnight,” said Reyes. “Derevyanchenko has been in tough fights and losing them. Do you know what I mean? So that is journeyman status.”
“Maybe some of these losses are because of his name. His name is not as big as other people’s names,” said Bess about Derevyanchenko. “Do you understand what I’m saying? So you don’t always get the nod when you don’t have a big name, and you know that. I’m just not going to throw that title on him like that.”
“I haven’t thrown it. I said he’s stepping into that status, and this body is going to determine whether he’s dead or whether he’s not,” said Reyes about Derevyanchenko.