Srisaket Sor Rungvisai vs. Juan Francisco Estrada this Saturday on HBO

By Dan Ambrose: The long awaited fight between WBC super flyweight champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (43-4-1, 39 KOs) and Juan Francisco Estrada (36-2, 25 KOs) will be taking place this Saturday night on February 24 on HBO Boxing After Dark at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

The two talented fighters will be competing in the main event on the SuperFly2 card. The start time for the televised portion of the card on HBO is at 9:30 p.m. ET/6:30 p.m. PT.

There’s a tremendous amount of interested in the Rungvisai-Estrada fight, as well as in the undercard contests on the card between Carlos Cuadras and McWilliams Arroyo, Brian Viloria vs. Artem Dalakian and Donnie Nietes and Juan Carlos Reveco. The card is loaded with talented fighters.

It’s going to be difficult for Estrada to out-box the bigger and stronger Rungvisai. Estrada has spent most of his career at flyweight where he held the WBA/WBO titles. Estrada moved up in weight to the flyweight division in 2016, and he’s won 3 fights in the weight class in beating Raymond Tabugon, Anuar Salas and Carlos Cuadras. The way Estrada looked against Cuadras, he’s going to have a tough time trying to defeat the bigger and stronger Rungvisai. This is a pressure fighter that Estrada is going to be dealing with in Rungvisai, and he’s not faced anyone like that before. Estrada has fought Cuadras and Roman Gonzalez, but neither of them have the same kind of power that Rungvisai has going for him.

The 27-year-old Estrada is a good boxer, but he’s not cut out for the super flyweight division at 115 lbs. We saw that last September in Estrada’s fight against Cuadras. Estrada was getting pummeled before Cuadras gassed out in the fight. Rungvisai is an even bigger puncher than Cuadras, and he doesn’t fade in his fights. Estrada is going to have be focused entirely on boxing against Rungvisai, and that’s not going to be a recipe to win the fight. Estrada is going to take a beating from Rungvisai and either run to survive another day or he’ll end up getting knocked out.

For Estrada to defeat Rungvisai, he’ll need to use a lot of movement to stay out of range, because he’s not going to beat him by landing the perfect eye-catching counter punches. Rungvisai will walk through Estrada’s counters to nail him with huge punches all night long. Rungvisai is like the Gennady Golovkin of the super flyweight division. There hasn’t been anyone that could stand up to Rungvisai’s power in a long time. Estrada probably won’t be the one to do the job. He’s not a big enough puncher to make Rungvisai think twice about coming forward to hammer him with big power shots.

Rungvisai, 31, is looking unstoppable right now with the way he chewed up former #1 pound-for-pound star Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez in his last 2 fights. Rungvisai destroyed a fighter that beat Juan Francisco Estrada by a 12 round unanimous decision in November 2012. It was a close fight, but Gonzalez was the better fighter of the two. Gonzalez didn’t have nearly as many problems with the finesse fighter Estrada as he did with Rungvisai. There’s no comparison. Rungvisai was just walking forward, taking shots and firing back his much big punches to the head and body of Chocolatito. That’s how Rungvisai has done with everybody during his career. It’s a rare fighter that is capable of standing up to the heat that Rungvisai puts on them. The last guy that beat Rungvisai was Carlos Cuadras in 2014. Cuadras suffered a cut over his left eye in the 8th round from a clash of heads. The fight was stopped after the round ended, and went to the scorecards. Cuadras won a narrow decision by the scores 78-73, 77-75 and 77-75. Those were fair scores. Cuadras was doing a good job of out-boxing Rungvisai, and getting out of the way of his shots. Cuadras was fighting a lot like Saul Canelo Alvarez by fighting in spurts in the first minute of the rounds to impress the judges. In the last 2 minutes of the rounds, Cuadras would get tired and fight defensively. The judges gave Cuadras a lot of rounds where he only worked hard at the beginning of the round. The fight took place in Cuadras’ home country of Mexico. If the fight were staged someplace else, it’s unclear who would have won. I had Cuadras beating Rungvisai, but the Thailand fighter was coming on and he appeared to be taking over the fight at the time of the stoppage.

“I’m ready for The Champ, this has been a tremendous camp with great sparring,”Estrada said. “It’s great to be here in front of the media and my supporters, many of whom are coming to the fight.”

Estrada, 27, had a tough time beating Cuadras by a 12 round unanimous decision in his last fight in September. The only reason Estrada won was because Cuadras got tired in the last half of the contest. Estrada won by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113. Earlier in the fight, it looked like Cuadras was going to run away with the fight, as he was using his size and punching power to pummel the weaker Estrada with heavy shots. Cuadras got the better of Estrada in the first 5 rounds. After that, Cuadras gassed out and lost pretty much every round. You can make an argument that Cuadras did enough for the fight to be scored a 12 round draw. The judges gave Estrada credit for a couple of rounds in the second half of the contest in which Cuadras could have won them with his bigger punches. Cuadras looked like the better fighter than Estrada, but he didn’t have the engine to finish the second half of the contest. If Cuadras was better shape, he would have won the fight easily based on his huge size and power advantage.

Carlos Cuadras vs. McWilliams Arroyo

Former WBC super flyweight champion Carlos Cuadras (36-2-1, 27 KOs) will be fighting 2008 Olympian McWilliams Arroyo (16-3, 14 KOs) for the vacant WBC Super flyweight title. This is supposed to be a World Boxing Council 115 lb. title eliminator. The winner will be the WBC mandatory challenger to Rungvisai. Cuadras already beat Rungvisai once, so he could have a slight advantage for that reason. Arroyo hasn’t fought in almost 2 years since losing to Roman Gonzalez by a 12 round unanimous decision in April 2016. That must have been a difficult loss for Arroyo to digest, as he took a beating and lost by the scores 120-108, 119-109 and 119-109. This was at flyweight, which was a better weight for Gonzalez than the super flyweight division. With the inactivity Arroyo has had since 2016 and the fact that he’s moving up in weight to the 115 lb. weight class to fight a heavy puncher in Cuadras, it makes it difficult to see this fight as one he can win. Arroyo’s only chance of winning this fight is if he can box and counter punch Cuadras like Juan Francisco Estrada did, and hope he runs out of gas in the second half of the contest. If Cuadras is able to fight at a fast pace for the entire fight without fading, Arroyo is in trouble.

Cuadras is now being trained by Abel Sanchez out of Big Bear, California. Sanchez is working on the 29-year-old Cuadras’ conditioning in trying to improve that area. If Sanchez can fix that problem, Cuadras is going to have a good chance of beating the 32-year-old Arroyo.