Srisaket Sor Rungvisai vs Juan Francisco Estrada meet again!
Roughly one year ago, WBC super-flyweight champion Srisaket Sor Rungvisai narrowly defeated a game Juan Francisco Estrada by UD. Now, with fourteen more months of training, Estrada is ready for his second shot at the champion!
This Friday April 26, the two will collide once again at the Forum located in Inglewood, California. The intriguing rematch will air live on DAZN.
As mentioned earlier, the premiere bout was a highly contested affair and over the course of twelve rounds, both men truly pushed and challenged the other.
Due to the close nature of the first bout, there is no solid guarantee of who will prevail in this second outing. Since the two pugilists have already shared the ring, it’ll be interesting see what alterations are made in their individual plans of attack.
Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (47-4-1, 41KO)
While his two year-reign as the WBC Super Flyweight champion has been impressive, if Rungvisai intends on retaining his belt through the weekend, he will need to tighten up a few aspects of his game.
To begin, it is imperative that Rungvisai establish and maintain a more measured and controlled pace throughout the contest. During their first scrap, the Thai champion was successful in functioning as the aggressive ring general. However, this very aggression played against him in spots. For example, the he frequently was guilty of over-shooting his punches. His hook in particular suffered due to this over anxiousness.
While marshaling a more measured pace would be a proper update of the previous game plan, Rungvisai would be wise to once again throw punches in combination when coming forward. He enjoyed a great deal of success doing this the first time around and would be wise to repeat the tactic.
Defensively speaking, Rungvisai needs to concern himself with evading counter shots. A large part of Estrada’s success with landing counter punches was due to the fact that Rungvisai backed straight up. Juan landed a great deal of counters, particularly in the middle rounds, the last time they went head to head.
Juan Francisco Estrada (38-3, 26KO)
As for Estrada, the tenacious Mexican would be well advised to go to the body early and often! Physically speaking, he is the smaller man and would be well-served to sap some of the hard-hitting opposition’s power early by attacking the belly with a gusto.
Along with a healthy body attack, Estrada needs to continue to throw in combination as he did fourteen months ago. More specifically, he should focus in on his jab and jab-straight-right-hand combo. The jab and this particular punch formation caused Rungvisai a great deal of complications. When properly applied, Rungvisai found himself constantly resetting his position.
Defensively speaking, similar to Rungvisai, Estrada has to be mindful not to back up in a straight line. Instead, he needs to step the side when evading attacks. On the outside looking in, it appeared that Rungvisai was more dominant than he actually was during their first fight due to the improper retreat. Also, Estrada would be well advised to not dip to his right when dodging blows. Last year, Estrada consistently dipped right into Rungvisai’s straight left hand. He cannot afford to repeat this mistake.
Prediction
In the end, I believe that Rungvisai will prevail once again, by a more convincing, unanimous decision.
By: Bakari Simpson
