The road back to a world title for Jaime Munguia continues in a familiar setting.
The Mexican super middleweight star comes home this Saturday, Dec. 14, to face the unbeaten Bruno Surace in the 10-round main event at Estadio Caliente in Tijuana(ESPN+, 9 p.m. ET).
Munguia (44-1, 35 KOs) looks to cap off a busy four-fight 2024 campaign that has included stoppage wins over John Ryder and Erik Bazinyan and a decision loss to Canelo Alvarez. He stopped Bazinyan in 10 rounds in September, four months after his valiant 12-round battle against Canelo. This marks Munguia’s first fight in Tijuana since February 2022.
Surace (25-0-2, 4 KOs), from Marseille, France, has won 22 straight fights after a pair of early-career draws. He is fighting away from France for the first time and coming off the most significant victory of his career, last December’s 12th-round TKO over the previously undefeated Jhon Jader Obregon.
This is what Munguia and Surace had to say at Thursday’s press conference.
Jaime Munguia
“He is a strong fighter. He throws a lot of combinations. We have to be careful with that. I’ve studied him, and I’m confident of the work that we have done. I will walk away with my hand raised in victory.”
“If I knew in what round I could knock him out, I would bet all of my money on that. But I don’t know. It’s uncertain. I can tell you now with full certainty that I will be looking for the knockout.”
“It’s a big weight on my shoulders to fight in this stadium in front of all my people. It’s going to fill me with a lot of emotions. But I have to control that and do an intelligent fight. And I’m prepared to do that and give a great show to the people.”
“We have to focus on everything. Obviously, we focus on improving my boxing skills, but we also focus on the physical conditioning and the mental aspects.”
In the 10-round co-feature, WBC No. 1 junior featherweight contender Alan Picasso (30-0-1, 16 KOs) hopes to set the stage for a monster 2025 when he takes on Ghana’s Isaac Sackey (26-2-2, 21 KOs).
Leave a Reply