A huge fight fight card headlined by WBC super flyweight champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai vs. Juan Francisco Estrada is said to be a done deal for April 26 on DAZN in Los Angles, California, according to RingTV. The promoters of the event still need to make their announcement before the card is official.
A year ago, Rungvisai (47-4-1, 41 KO) defeated Estrada (38-3, 26 KOs) by a 12 round majority decision last February at The Forum in Inglewood, California. It was exciting to watch Estrada try and figure out how to land shots against the heavy handed Rungvisai without getting clipped by his big punches.
The scoring by two of the judges was very generous for Estrada. He appeared to win 2, possibly 3 rounds, but two of them judges saw the fight as close in scoring it 115-113 for Rungvisai and Dave Moretti 114-114. The third judge had Rungvisai winning by the score 117-111, which made a lot more sense than the other two scores. Ideally, Estrada will come to fight more in the rematch in order to give himself a better chance of beating Rungvisai.
Estrada did a good job of hurting Rungvisai and almost knocking him out in the 12th round when he opened up with a storm of shots against the tired fighter. However, Estrada ran out of time, and wasn’t able to finish him off. There will be a lot of risk involved if Estrada tried to open up with his offense early in the fight while Rungvisai is still fresh. Estrada could get clipped with a big head shot from Rungvisai and taken out, but he’s got to try. Estrada isn’t going to beat Rungvisai if all he does is fight defensively for 12 rounds. That didn’t work for Estrada, because Rungvisai was still able to land his hard punches at long range to his body.
Rungvisai gained a lot of boxing fans with his two wins over Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez in 2017. Before those two fights, Rungvisai was an unknown with the boxing world in the U.S, but he’s done a good job of picking up a large following in the State in a short period of time. Since his win over Estrada, Rungvisai has beaten Young Gil Bae and Iran Diaz.
Rungvisai vs. Estrada 2 & and Roman vs. Doheny aren’t household names in the United State with the casual fans obviously, but the hardcore boxing fans know who these guys are, and they’ll likely spread the word about how good this fight card is.
In the co-feature bout, WBA super bantamweight champion Danny Roman will be facing IBF champion TJ Doheny in a big unification fight that is expected to have a lot of fireworks. Doheny (21-0, 15 KOs) is a big puncher, who has involved in a lot of exciting fights during his seven-year pro career. It doesn’t matter who Doheny fights. All of his contests are wars.
Roman (26-2-1, 10 KOs) should make it interesting in battling Doheny (21-0, 15 KO). Roman has recent wins over Gavin McDonnell, Moises Flores and Ryo Matsumoto. Roman has won his last 18 fights since losing to Juan Reyes in 2013. Doheny, 32, has recent wins over Ryohei Takahashi, Ryosuke Iwasa, Mike Oliver, Pipat Chaiporn and Espinose Sabu. Doheny’s punching power is going to be a problem for Roman unless he can get him out of there. Roman can’t afford to let Doheny stick around for the full 12 rounds, because he hits way too hard.
On paper, this fight is a much better one than the main event between the very aggressive Rungvisai, and the highly technical Estrada. Also on the card is former two division world champion Jessie Vargas (28-2-2, 10 KOs) moving up to 154. There’s no work who Vargas will be fighting, but since his first fight at junior middleweight, it likely won’t be anyone too good. Vargas had been in negotiations for a fight against Kell Brook. That fight isn’t happening. Brook is going to go in a different direction while he waits for Amir Khan to get done with his title shot against WBO welterweight champion Terence Crawford on April 20.