HBO makes an increasingly rare guest appearance in the sport of boxing Saturday night. In the main event, exciting young Mexican titleholder Jaime Munguia makes his first title defense against long time British contender and former belt holder Liam Smith. Alberto Machado returns in the co-main event for his first defense as well.
First, let’s just get this out of the way. Yes, HBO is a distance last place now in terms of network boxing relevance when compared to Showtime and ESPN. They’ll even be behind DAZN when it launches in September. The network is slowly and intentionally fading out of the boxing game. What they do still put on occasionally is not up to the old standards either. This is what it is at this point and there is no point in carrying on about it. Besides, this is a decent fight in the main event even if it never would have been an HBO main event a decade ago.
21 year old WBO junior middleweight titleholder Jaime Munguia (29-0, 25 KOs) came out of no where for most boxing fans when he demolished Sadam Ali in May as a late replacement, but I am proud to say that he didn’t for readers of my weekly Under the Radar Results column. Munguia had been a serious prospect prospect in the Mexican scene for some time. He seemed raw in many ways, chiefly by being a little slow and really open defensively, but he clearly possessed a rare sort of power. Initially Munguia was targeted as a Canelo Alvarez replacement for Gennady Golovkin to keep a Mexican opponent on Cinco de Mayo weekend, but the Nevada State Athletic Commission declined to sanction the fight. On paper that made sense. Munguia was a junior middleweight, not a middleweight, and at the young age of 21 had yet to fight a top fighter. It doesn’t seem as ridiculous now though, does it?
When then titleholder and former US Olympian Sadam Ali found himself in need of a new opponent after Liam Smith pulled out, they too turned to Munguia. This time the fight was accepted by the commission and my eyebrows were raised. In the preview I wrote, I called Munguia a “sneaky good” challenger and praised him for his obvious power. I surmised that it was his chin that would make the difference as I figured Ali would hit it frequently, but that never actually came to pass. Despite having dominated and retired Puerto Rican legend Miguel Angel Cotto in his previous fight, Ali was completely and totally overwhelmed. Munguia’s offense was so much that Ali didn’t really ever get those shots in for himself. He was thrashed and stopped in four. The fight was a star making performance for Jaime Munguia.
Of course, part of the question here was size. Munguia is a more of a full middleweight that can still cut to junior middleweight because of his youth. I fully suspect he will be a super middleweight by the end of his career. Sadam Ali won a junior middleweight title, but he would probably be best as a welterweight. Ali took his title from a man in Miguel Cotto who was really a welterweight himself too. Munguia’s size advantage was massive. Liam Smith (26-1-1, 14 KOs) is at least a full sized junior middleweight in there.
Liam “Beefy” Smith’s career track has been pretty straight forward. He came up in the classic British manner as part of the fighting Smith family. He won and defended the British title a few times before moving on to compete on the world level, or at least for world titles. The truth is that Smith didn’t really fight on the world level until the losing the belt. He picked up the then vacant belt with a stoppage win over a mostly underserving challenger in John Thompson only to follow up the belt win with two defenses that were somehow even worse than the bad title win. When Liam finally stepped up, he gave a spirited effort but Canelo Alvarez firmly had his way with him before finishing the fight on a vicious body shot in the ninth round. When Liam returned, he didn’t look the same initially. He needed some real luck and controversy to get the first win over Liam Williams, though he did look better and win the rematch fairly.
Now Liam Smith is back on track for his second world title. As I mentioned above, he was initially slated to face Ali for the belt but had to pull out. Given that it was his absence that led to Ali’s demise, it feels appropriate the Liam Smith becomes Jaime Munguia’s next victim in the ring. I think that is what will happen too. Liam is a little bigger and definitely more durable than a guy who has also been knocked out by Jessie Vargas, but I’d wage that he won’t get too deep into the second half of the fight. I see him finished in rounds 7-9. Munguia is just too big, too young, and too strong.
Puerto Rican WBA junior lightweight titleholder Alberto Machado (19-0, 16 KOs) is an appropriate fighter to pair with Munguia in the co-main event. Much like the Mexican junior middleweight titleholder, Machado is a big puncher who is a little defensively deficient. He is slower relative to their weight classes though, but he also has a pretty nice and fun win over Jezreel Corrales to take his belt the last time out. Unfortunately, I can’t say much about this fight though. Ghanaian title challenger Rafael Mensah (31-0, 23 KOs) is a complete unknown even to the most obsessive fight fans like myself. He has never fought a top contender or competed outside of Ghana. He hasn’t even fought in a scheduled ten round fight since 2015, instead taking eight rounders in his last five contests. He is a strange mandatory challenger to say the least. I suspect he won’t have a lot to offer as these obscure mandatories rarely do, but Ghana is a proud fight country and it is not like I have seen him fight to be able to say with confidence that Rafael Mesah can’t compete on this level. I guess we will just have to wait and find out.
The show begins at 10 PM Eastern on HBO.
