By Dan Ambrose: Jaime Munguia wants to step it up after his fight against Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Saturday against inactive fighters Jermall Charlo or Gennady Golovkin at the end of the year.
(Photo credit: Cris Esqueda/Golden Boy Promotions)
Munguia headlines against the 37-year-old Derevyanchenko (14-4, 10 KOs) on DAZN at the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California.
Golden Boy Promotions boss Oscar De La Hoya asked whether Munguia can do what Golovkin, Charlo, and Carlos Adames couldn’t by knocking out Derevyanchenko this week.
De La Hoya didn’t say that Derevyanchenko is older now and battle worn from those encounters. He’s not the same fighter that gave GGG all he could handle in 2019 and came close to defeating then-prime Daniel Jacobs in 2018.
The unbeaten Munguia should win this Saturday night, but he needs to focus on the doable fights instead of calling out Jermall and Golovkin.
WBC interim middleweight champion Carlos Adames and Janibek Alimkhanuly would agree to fight Munguia in a second if he showed interest, but why isn’t he asking?
Munguia had his window
The 26-year-old Munguia (41-0, 33 KOs) has been around for a long, long time but may have missed his window to get a fight against the 41-year-old former middleweight champion Golovkin and WBC 160-lb champ Charlo by waiting until his tenth year as a professional to make a huge push to fight them.
This is something that Munguia should have done in 2017 or 2018 instead of waiting until GGG and Jermall are older & both not having been seen since the age of the dinosaurs.
It’s a tactic that promoters use to wait until a fighter is old, inactive & over-the-hill before they finally let their prospects fight them. In this case, De La Hoya may have waited too long to let their fighter finally face them.
Unfortunately for the Golden Boy-promoted Munguia (41-0, 33 KOs), he may have waited too long to begin trying to get a fight against Charlo and Golovkin, as those two haven’t fought eons, and it’s unknown when or if either will fight again.
“The most important is Derevyanchenko, and after a big name like [Jermall] Charlo or Gennadiy Golovkin would be a huge fight at the end of the year,” said Jaime Munguia to Fighthype.
“I’m not desperate at all. Sometimes the opportunities are what they are, and hopefully, after this fight, we get the one that everyone has been asking for.
“Definitely, David Benavideez will be the most important fight of my career. It’ll be a huge, huge battle, and hopefully, after Derevyanchenko, we can talk about it.
“I think it’s going to be a close fight where anyone can win, but I suspect it’ll be Crawford,” said Munguia when asked for a prediction on the July 29th super-bout between welterweight title-holders Errol Speence Jr and Terence ‘Bud’ Crawford.
Can @jaimemunguia15 do what @GGGBoxing @FutureOfBoxing and Adames couldn’t do on jume 10 vs @SDerevyanchenko @DAZNBoxing @GoldenBoyBoxing
— Oscar De La Hoya (@OscarDeLaHoya) June 2, 2023
