The Fight Site Boxing Preview, March 4th
Photo by John McCoy/Getty Images
There’s just the one major fight happening this week, but it’s shaping up to be a banger. Magsayo and Figueroa are both ready to throw down at the drop of a hat, so let’s take a look.
Brandon Figueroa vs Mark Magsayo
Featherweight
So yes, this is a clash of action fighters. Figueroa is one of the most notoriously front-foot boxers in the whole sport, regularly through 80+ punches a round and sometimes exceeding 100. Magsayo doesn’t set quite that kind of tempo, but neither is he one to back away from a scrap, so it should be high-paced all the way.
Both are coming in to this seeking to recover from losses. Figueroa has won since his defeat to Stephen Fulton last year, but though Carlos Castro is no mug, this is his first real test since then. It’s also his first real test at a new weight, since Castro is himself a fighter who bounces between feather and super-bantam.
Magsayo, meanwhile, is coming straight in from his loss to Rey Vargas in summer last year. That’s a risk, especially since at first glance Figueroa’s style bears some resemblance to what Vargas did in that victory. There are reasons for optimism from Magsayo’s side, though.
Firstly, although there are similarities, Vargas is not Figueroa, even at his most aggressive. While he was certainly able to push Magsayo back pretty often, and punish him with rangy, slightly looping shots to the body similar to those that Figueroa throws, that wasn’t the sole part of his gameplan. In fact, when Vargas did just set himself and push in, that gave Magsayo probably his best moments, countering with sharp right hands that Vargas walked on to, including for one knockdown.
Figueroa’s problem could be that that’s all he does, really. Where Vargas really had joy was playing with range just a little bit, getting Magsayo to commit to a move before attacking. Figueroa hasn’t really displayed anything like that, to date. He’ll be pushing as hard as he can, and he’s really no less open to those right hands than Vargas. So he’ll likely be walking through them to get to where he needs.
Magsayo’s other cause for optimism is that Vargas, though long for his weight, knows how to shorten his shots as he gets closer, whereas Figueroa tends to get a little loose and sloppy. He still lands, and a lot, but there’s not as much power in close as at mid-range. That’ll give Magsayo, who keeps things pretty tight in close defensively, hope that he can ride the storm and get his counters in.
The last factor on this side of the argument is, simply, size and weight. Sure, Figueroa is the longer taller fighter, but he’s coming up in weight. As mentioned, Castro was technically in this weight class, but he’s a career weigh-hopper who’s spent as much time at super bantam as feather. This’ll be the first time he’s hitting and being hit by a career featherweight, and how that’ll go remains to be seen.
The most obvious argument in the other direction is the pace. Magsayo is keen to fight, but he doesn’t throw anywhere near the volume Figueroa does. And while he hasn’t been seen to gas out, per se, his loss to Vargas came in part because his pace seemed to drop in the middle rounds. He rallied a bit late on, but against Figueroa? It’ll be hard to make up lost ground.
There’s also the fact that, while competent and protecting his head, Magsayo’s high guard is static, and leaves his body open. Vargas really took advantage of this, and Figueroa will probably do the same. Figueroa’s range advantage will come in to play here, too - he’ll be landing those before Magsayo can safely answer, even if he’ll walk onto counters afterwards. It’ll both let him do damage, and mean he has the initiative at most times throughout the fight.
That last will be exacerbated by Magsayo’s problems with long punches. In essence, he has the opposite problem to his opponent. Where Figueroa gets a bit sloppy in close, Magsayo’s good form inside can go out the window when asked to throw a longer shot. In fact, rather than really extending his shots much, he tends to lean forward, and thus overbalance. The same is true when asked to close distance quickly- while a good patient pressure fighter, he’s not so great when it becomes urgent. Figuerao isn’t the opponent who’ll really play the matador to take advantage, but he will land flurries of solid shots in those moments.
It’s also worth remembering, on the flipside of the weight question, that if Figueroa had been struggling to cut down to super-bantam -certainly plausible- moving up may give him more relative power and durability, not less.
One wild-card factor is Figueroa’s rather odd stance and movement in general. He’s a tall fighter, at the weight, but he tends to come in low and often a bit off-line, verging on off-balance. How this will affect the fight is hard to say. He could use it to punish Magsayo’s rather straight-line tendencies, throw punches at angles that basic defence isn’t ready to deal with. And if he can keep off-line consistently, Magsayo will find it hard to adjust the angles - he’s not really that sort of fighter. But, on the flip-side, if he times the movement wrong, he could instead lean right into one of those overhand rights, while off-balance. That could be a fight-changer. So beware.
All in all, it’s a hard fight to call. Figueroa is certainly the fighter with the bigger bag of tools and more experience, but the combination of weight jump and a few matchup-specific stylistic quirks makes it a close one, very tough to pick. It should, however, be fun.
The Rest
The co-main event features the return of Jarrett Hurd after nearly two years out. That last outing was a failed first foray up to middleweight against Luis Arias. There were a few issues at the time with him trying to be a slicker boxer than maybe he should, maybe getting into his own head a bit about moving up in weight. Word out of his new camp is that he’s refocused, gone back to his hard-pushing style, and committed to a full jump to 160lbs. If that’s true, he should have too much for his opponent, Armando Resendiz, a game but rather sloppy puncher who’d need to be a whole lot bigger to trouble a fit-and-firing Hurd.
Beyond that, probably the main attraction is an unbeaten prospect clash that could be another tear-up, in the middleweight division. Amilcar Vidal is a 27-year-old Uruguayan with a gloves-up, get-forward, slug-it-out style. Elijah Lorenzo Garcia, 19, looks to be a bit slicker with some nice head movement and clever combinations, but is still a come-forward fighter. His long-term upside is probably the higher of the two, but the test will be whether he can handle Vidal’s attritional style and likely physical advantages. It could be entertaining. We also see Terrell Gausha, seeking to rebuild from his loss to Tim Tszyu, in with Brandyn Lynch, and an outing for potentially exciting junior middleweight, Travon Marshall.