Emerging Mexican star Juan Francisco Estrada (24-2, 18) makes the first defense of his WBA and WBO Flyweight titles that he claimed from Brian Viloria earlier this year. Estrada returns to the scene of that victory over Viloria as he faces unbeaten Filipino challenger Milan Melindo (29-0, 12).
The 23 year old Estrada really came to the attention of boxing fans late last year when he narrowly lost in a Light Flyweight title bout to Roman Gonzalez. Since then Estrada has become a favourite of mine with his heart and style.
At Flyweight Estrada is huge and uses his size and strength to his advantage as he brings a lot of pressure, true toughness (both mentally and physically) and very solid work rate. His toughness is draining to any opponent and he appeared to take the best shots of both Gonzalez (one of the hardest punchers pound-for-pound in world boxing) and Viloria with out ever being that hurt.
Against Viloria it was the relentless pressure that saw Estrada winning. He took everything Viloria had and kept coming forward, in the second half of the fight he started to take over and came very close to stopping an exhausted Viloria late.
With a wonderful variety of punches to both head and body Estrada is a difficult fighter to defend against, he's impossible to discourage and he's a fighter who break opponents mentally or physically if they are anything other than a special fighter themselves.
Unbeaten Filipino Melindo is a fighter who has been on the verges of a world title fight for several years. He has scored impressive victories over a mini-who's who such as Muhammad Rachman, Carlos Tamara, Jesus Geles and Jean Piero Perez though has had to wait several years for his first world title bout.
Unfortunately for Melindo he's probably managed to get his world title fight at the worst time. If you look at the current Flyweight champions they are exceptional, Estrada is one of the sports most over-looked men, no one will have an easy time with Moruti Mthalane (the IBF champion) and WBC champion Akira Yaegashi is a bundle of action encased in a teak tough man. Basically every champion at the weight is special, and Estrada is probably the best.
Melindo is a talented counter puncher. He slips shots well before firing back his own and although he's not as slippery or as skilled as either Floyd Mayweather Jr or Guillermo Rigondeaux who is? At the fringes of world level his counter punching sees him to victories with out too many problems (usually) though I'm not sure how well those skills will cope at genuine world level.
Having seen Melindo pushed hard by Perez however I've got to admit I have worries about him here. If he attempts to slip shots from Estrada he will get caught, repeatedly and eventually worn down and sadly I can't Melindo having enough in his arsenal to defeat Estrada.
Prediction-Estrada TKO7
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