El Confessor to make light work of Kakutani?
Many fans of the lighter divisions will know that we currently love the Flyweight division, arguably the most entertaining division fight after fight after fight. It's a division that in recent years has provided some fantastic buts, most recently Koki Eto's victory over Kompayak Porpramook.
Despite our love of the Flyweight division we've not got the same adulation for it's little brother the Light Flyweight division, despite the fact if features Kazuto Ioka and Teiken fighter Roman Gonzalez.
One of the reason's we dislike the division, at least on the world level, is that it's actually quite a weak division. You have Gonzalez and Ioka then you struggle to define who is the #3 fighter in the division. Is it Johnriel Casimero? Is it former Casimero victim Pedro Guevara? Is it Adrian Hernandez? It's hard to say.
What we can say however is that Hernandez (27-2-1, 16) will be strongly favoured to retain his WBC title later this month when he takes on Japanese challenger Atsushi Kakutani (13-3-1, 6) a fighter who in all honesty shouldn't be considered as even qualified to fight for a world title.
We don't like saying someone shouldn't be qualified for something but it's hard to see what Kakutani has done to be deserving of a world title fight. He has lost his two highest profile bouts to date including an opening round defeat to Wars Katsumata/Warlito Parrenas just over 2 years ago and suffered a loss to Teiru Kinoshita in his only previous title bout. Yes Kakutani hasn't even been crowned the Japanese champion.
Although the 28 year old Japanese fighter was unlucky against Kinoshita, losing a debated split decision, he didn't look particularly good in the fight before or the fight after the Kinoshita bout, drawing with Takashi Omae and narrowly defeating Rey Loreto.
In Kakutani's most recent bout he defeated limited Thai Kaokarat Kaolernlekgym, though the victory really proved little due to how poor the Thai was.
The only real advantage we can see for Kakutani is that he's a natural Flyweight so he may be very much the stronger, bigger man in the ring, though then again he may also be drained in the ring.
"El Confesor" Hernandez has the strongest claim to be the third best fighter in the division. Aged 27 Hernandez has scored victories over a mini who's who including Rodel Mayol, Gilberto Keb Baas, twice, and Kompayak Porpramook. He's shown that whilst he can be beaten, and stopped, he's actually a credible fighter who can box or bang and at his best he's takes quite some beating, Porpramook who's first fight with Hernandez was special indeed.
This is set to be Hernandez's third defense of the title this year and whilst that sounds impressive it's to be noted that none of the challengers have been great. Defenses against and Dirceu Cabarca and Yader Cardoza are certainly nothing to write home about.
Unfortunately for Kakutani his punch resistance is a real worry for us, especially seeing how Katsumata/Parrenas dropped him 3 times inside a round. Sure Katsumata/Parrenas is a huge puncher and Hernandez isn't, but Hernandez is a world class boxer with a solid punch on him, a punch we expect will send Kakutani to the canvas several times before the referee stops the contest.