This bronze-skinned and bleached-blonde light welterweight from Puerto Rico is one bad mamma jamma, with a perfect record of 15-0 (15) as of last night. It might be time we begin seriously considering that he's on the shortlist of p4p hardest punchers in the game right now. So far, in the last couple of years, Matías has faced a host of opponents ranging from fair to good and representing a wide variety of styles in Patrick López, Adrian Estrella, Daulis & Breidis Prescott, Fernando David Saucedo, Maksim Kaibkhanovich Dadashev, Wilberth López and Jonathan José Eniz. Together, he lost perhaps six rounds to all eight of them combined...and excepting Dadashev, none made it past the 6th. He isn't, then, some one-trick pony in the Wilder or Stevenson mode, willingly hemorrhaging points (unwilling or unable to actively outbox his opponents) and sitting on the one big game-changing shot until he spies a place for it. He isn't flawless (particularly defensively) but he seems to be able to work around his flaws - and seems to have a great chin to bail him out when he miscalculates. He can adapt to new stylistic challenges on the fly, making adjustments mid-fight when presented with adversity, switch-hitting where necessary, and is brutally effective with a high rate of accuracy in power shots both coming forward and on the backfoot. He currently isn't even ranked #1 at his weight among boricuas - inexplicably, José "Sniper" Pedraza is despite being 0-1 in the division (losing his light welter debut against José "Chon" Zepeda in September) - but make no mistake, he is a beast, among the best pound for pound on his island, and IMO top 5 h2h @ 140lbs - and I might only favor Rougarou Prograis and TTT over him at this point. Keep an eye out for the rise of Browny - and I don't mean Ezekiel Brook's chocolate fist.
There was some concern that his role in Dadashev's tragic passing might cast a pall over Subriel, affecting his future performances - but I'm happy to report that versus Eniz he looked confident and composed, and responded to a rally by Eniz in the 4th round by savaging him in the 5th. You never can predict how such things will impact the surviving fighter going forward - they can process their feelings about it and then move on to achieve great careers, like Sergey Kovalev after Roman Simakov, or they can never be the same. In a morbidly curious side by side parallel, we also had Carlos Adames in action last night, losing to Patrick Teixeira in his first outing since he fought Patrick Day (within a month of Matías vs. Dadashev, with the same disastrously unfortunate result). I haven't seen that match yet, but have seen both fighters before and wouldn't have bet on Teixeira in that one, had Adames been his original self.
Matias is a very high volume heavy handed fighter. This guy is a monster who I'm sure Josh Taylor will avoid when he's called up as his mandatory.
Clarification (on @CST80's advisement) - it wasn't the Adames fight after which Patrick Day collapsed and later died, but I do believe taking a 10 round beating from him and then having another ten hard rounds with Conwell just a few months later was a major contributory factor in his passing. Had it just been the Conwell fight in a vacuum, he would probably be alive today.
A fight with Subriel against either Josh or Regis is almost too difficult to imagine. Those fights would be so fucking good...
I don't know who's promoting Matias but he should be considered a total dream for any one of the big boys in the game. He's an exciting, physically imposing, technical beast who packs a serious punch. Who can't like that in a boxer? I'm watching his next fight for sure.
I don't think any of those guys have too much of a chance if they can't adapt to shift stepping which is very difficult to read and counter.
The bazooka-packing Fajardeño is actually within a couple of spots of the mandatory position for both José Carlos Ramírez (in the WBC) and Josh Taylor (in the IBF). While the fight with Taylor would be absolutely EPIC, my preference would be to see him expose JCR first. That's a guaranteed world title belt (actually, two, since the WBO likely would sanction it for their belt as well, also held by Ramírez; they have Matías ranked #10) ...and unification would just make Taylor vs. Matías all the bigger an event.
