This weekend Mexican Jesus Silvestre (25-3, 18) will make the first defense of his WBA "interim" Minimunweight title as he faces unbeaten Japanese fighter Takuya Mitamura (12-0, 2) in a bout that appears to be much, much more meaningful than the bout that saw Silvestre claiming the belt.
Silvestre won the title just a few months back as he out pointed Panamanian Edwin Diaz (15-18, 5) in what I felt was a joke of a fight, so much so that I didn't even attempt to watch it. Whilst it poor that Diaz getting the shot despite a losing record, it was made even worse that the bout for the interim title came just weeks after the the "regular" title had been unified with the WBC title by Kazuto Ioka.
Whilst Silvestre will go into this match as the "champion" he is an awfully weak champion and has very few notable victories. In fact he's lost to his 3 best opponents (Paipharob Kokietgym, Donnie Nites and Jose Alfredo Rodriguez) whilst his best wins have come against the likes of Yader Escobar and Walter Rojas, who are far from special themselves.
Despite being just 22 years old, Silvestre has been a professional for almost 6 years and with 28 fights behind him, I really need to question how much he can actually improve. Sadly from the footage I've seen he's very wide up, and whilst he has a nice array of body punches he's defensively awful and doesn't have any sort of world class quality. Whilst he appears to be big and tough he simply can't keeping eating punches or his career will be over very quickly.
Whilst I don't think much of Silvestre he does have one saving grace, the fact he is fighting at home. In Mexico Silvestre is 25-1 (18) away from Mexico however he is 0-2, more interestingly is that Silvestre is 15-0 (12) in his home state of Nayarit, the same state as this upcoming fight.
Sadly whilst Silvestre isn't great he is a lot more well known than Takuya Mitamura, who appears to be very difficult to find any footage of. Despite this what I do know is that Mitamura is unbeaten in 12 fights since turning professional in 2008 having won all 12 of those fights.
Last year Mitamura won his professional title by claiming the Japanese Minimumweight title by out pointing the experienced Takashi Kunishige (who's best known for fighting Edgar Sosa in a WBC world title fight) and he has since defended that belt once by stopping Toshihiro Nakashima. Despite being the national champion, no one really thinks that Mitamura is the best Minimumweight in Japan after all the country has Kazuto Ioka, Akira Yaegashi and Katsunari Takayama however is likely the best "#4" in world boxing.
Sadly for Mitamura however he's not much of a puncher and he will struggle to get a decision in Mexico against a Mexican fighter. With this is in mind it's hard to feel that the challenger really has a chance. Unless Mitamura can stop Silvestre he'll not win.
Prediction-Silvestre UD
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