Just as Teofimo Lopez was experiencing a rebirth of sorts at Madison Square Garden’s Hulu Theater in New York, Jaime Munguia was on the other side of the country, at Toyota Arena in Ontario, California, going through the possible stillbirth of his super middleweight campaign.
Not to be too critical here, but when you bring up a smaller fighter to serve as a showcase fall guy at your new, higher weight and he pushes you to the brink, nearly breaking you down, that’s NOT a good thing.
I get the reasoning behind Golden Boy/Team Munguia choosing Sergiy Derevyanchenko as an opponent for this particular fight. The Ukrainian is a smaller, older fighter who sports some serious mileage and has shown some signs of wear and tear in recent outings. He represented a good risk vs. reward opponent who has name value as a B-side, but who looked to be one small nudge away from a fall.
The 26-year-old Munguia was positioned to be the right guy at the right time to put an end to Derevyanchenko. The native of Tijuana, who was a wildly overstuffed middleweight and is still a bursting-at-the-seams super middleweight, would come into the fight as the much larger man. He’d also have an 11-year age advantage and be, by far, the fresher of the two fighters. Not only was Munguia being positioned to win, the feat of being the first to stop Derevyanchenko was being set up on a tee for the Mexican to knock out of the park.
The problem is that smart matchmaking only works if both guys play their roles.
In this particular case, Munguia’s technical and tactical flaws ran into Derevyanchenko’s unwillingness to play the fall guy. The end result was almost disastrous for Team Munguia’s dreams to eventually, someday, settle into a division and start becoming something other than a flawed, fun-to-watch prospect with premature main stage exposure.
The entertaining battle last Saturday saw Derevyanchenko shock and awe in the first half of the fight. He clipped the heavily-favored Munguia hard several times, buzzed him, and had him looking like a beaten man by the end of the fifth round.
To Munguia’s credit, he was able to catch a second wind. He fought back hard to stay in the fight and win rounds. But make no mistake about it, him coming on late and dropping Derevyanchenko in the twelfth round with a body shot was more a product of his advantages in size, age, and freshness than anything he did, skill-wise. And even with that second-half comeback, the fight would’ve been a majority draw without the last round knockdown.
This super middleweight coming out party for Munguia could’ve been a beginning of an end if Derevyanchenko had just a whisper more of life and vigor in his well-weathered body. But Munguia got the win...barely...even with every possible physical advantage. He may get points for guts and bravery, but the realists among us may correctly point out the folly of trying to match THIS Jaime Munguia against any of the super middleweight elites like David Benavidez, David Morrell, and, of course, Saul Alvarez.
One has to wonder what the strategy is behind moving up to 168 in the first place with the top dogs in the division so far above him and THE top dog, Canelo, not only above him, but also, likely, unwilling to give him a lucrative opponent slot. Munguia’s status as a fighter affiliated with Alvarez’s former promoter Golden Boy and as a fellow Mexican (Alvarez said he would not fight a fellow Mexican), may keep him outside of a Canelo lottery ticket reach.
Maybe moving Munguia up to 168 is merely a function of him not being able to make 160 anymore and his team being (rightfully) unwilling to move all the way up to light heavyweight for suicide matchups against Artur Beterbiev or Dmitry Bivol. Remember all that nonsense talk about Jaime facing Bivol? Somebody at Golden Boy was thinking about a move straight to 175.
Whatever the case, it looks like Jaime Munguia is going to require some astute matchmaking from here on out and a lot of patience from fans who will have to keep waiting on him to “step up.” The kid’s fun to watch, but he’s going nowhere.