Óscar Manuel Negrete Padilla vs. Alberto Ezequiel Melián

Headlining a GBP Thursday Night Fights card in 48 hours. The vacant WBA International bantamweight title will be at stake. Negrete and Melián are both absent from the WBA top 15 but looking to crack in by gaining this belt (Negrete is WBC #14).

"El Jaguar de Tierralta" Negrete is coming off a competitive trilogy against Joshua Franco, from which he ultimately walked out empty-handed. All three matches resulted in split decisions, with a pair of draws book-ending a victory for El Profesor (both the rematch and rubber-match between Franco and Negrete, incidentally, happened to be for this same now-vacant belt). This leaves Negrete winless in almost two years, officially riding an 0-1-2 slump.

"El Impacto" Melián was a decent amateur standout for Argentina, upsetting Cuban legend Robeisy Eloy Ramírez Carrazana while also scoring WSB victories over current unbeaten pros Stephen Fulton and Vincent Legrand - but also got completely schooled & shut out by Ash-Shakur Nafi-Shahid Stevenson in the Olympic qualifying tourney, and was KTFO in 1by Uzbek southpaw Murodjon Akhmadaliev in the actual Rio games. He's now 6-1 (4) professionally.

 

Melián is three inches taller but Negrete has a 1½″ reach advantage.

 

This actually is a "rematch" a decade in the making. In the amatuers, on 3/27/2010, Negrete defeated Melián by a score of 10:1 under the old system (meaning he utterly dominated).

 

Negrete vs. Franco III:

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Melián vs. Báez:

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I couldn't remember what my takeaway from Negrete's last dance with Franco was last August; had to look it up in the RBR.

Consistent with their first two matches, @CST80 on his scorecard was far more favorable to Franco, giving him the rubber match 99-91 (only giving Negrete the second). Weirdly, the @PinoyProdigy leaned hard in the opposite direction; he scored that one 96-94 Negrete.

Here was my summation of their rivalry as of then:

So, if that hard thirty rounds have taken a toll on Negrete and he's depleted from that form - I favor Melián here. If he's the same Jaguar from the Franco trilogy, I lean his way. Although we don't really know how either of them looks versus anybody else because they've been jammed up with each other for so long, so handicapping any different match-ups for either of them is going to be hard at first.

 

Incidentally, the guy that handed Melián his pro defeat, Leonard Báez, is taking on former IBO and interim WBA super bantam titlist Moises "Chucky" Flores on the undercard.

 

I guess Sandoval vs. Tabugon is actually the main event.