A week from Saturday, 3/17 (yes, that is also known as Saint Patrick's Day in the USA...basically an excuse for everybody to get drunk; real Irish people barely celebrate the holiday) in Cancún. Televisa Deportes will air the card from 6:30pm EST, and CBS Sports Net is set to simulcast at least part of it on this side of the border. Now, before anybody gets mad at Mijares for having pulled out from his scheduled challenge of WBC 130lb champion Miguel Berchelt last month - don't. Seriously, just fuck off if you want to criticize Mijares or accuse him of "ducking" Berchelt for Saucedo. First off, nobody gave him a chance vs. Berchelt (except me, half-heartedly) and the match-up's announcement was met with universal derision. See: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/miguel-berchelt-vs-cristian-mijares.599524/ Besides, he felt he got a low-ball offer and didn't think it worth the risk to his personal well-being to get in with a much younger and bigger prime beast of a KO artist unless he stood to be financially compensated enough to make it worth it. That's his prerogative. He isn't robbing Berchelt of some torch-passing opportunity, anyway, since nobody would have given El Alacrán much if any more credit for knocking out a small old Mijares than he in fact did receive for knocking out the vastly less skillful replacement opponent, Maxwell Awuku of Ghana. 2nd of all, he isn't swerving Berchelt so he can babysit his ranking and embark on some bum tour biding his time waiting for a less dangerous champ he can try and lift a belt from. He's retiring. Officially. This year. Saucedo will be his penultimate fight, the first half of his farewell home-stand in his native Quintana Roo. They are the same age, 36yrs. Saucedo, while a feather-fist (considerably more of a feather-fist than even Mijares, who long wore that label himself) is someone that was always considered by experts to be fringe world class. He was decidedly a level below the elites, and they defeated him whenever he stepped up, but he was known for posting lengthy undefeated streaks in between those defeats (to Popó Freitas in '04, and then Chris John in 2010, and then Rances Barthelemy in 2014, and finally Emmanuel Tagoe a few weeks ago). Mitigating the lack of power, El Vasco is a natural lightweight, while El Diamante has climbed all the way up from light fly in his campaign. Between them you have perhaps a higher combined boxing IQ than you will see in a ring for the rest of the year. This is a much fairer and more potentially competitive match-up on paper than Berchelt vs. Mijares ever was...and I'm more than okay with it.
...aaaand, this is probably about what to expect for my RBR thread for this (zero replies + couple dozen views in 4 hours...)
The Saucedo bout vs. Tagoe was a ****ing disaster. He didn’t do **** the entire fight except posture and complain to the referee. It was quite hard to watch. I just noticed this bout earlier tonight as well and had mixed feelings when seeing it. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty but I’ll be watching lol
