HOZUMI HASEGAWA vs ALVARO LOPEZ

After two one-round wins in a row — and two consecutive second-round wins before this — Hozumi Hasegawa might have a longer night when he defends his WBC bantam title against Alvaro Perez in a clash of southpaws in Japan on Friday.

If nothing else, the Nicaraguan challenger will be well aware that Hasegawa is very dangerous in the early rounds, and I would expect him initially to keep a very tight defence and be extremely careful.

Something else comes to mind. When a fighter is blowing people out, we come to expect them to do this in every fight. It doesn’t always work out like that. A good example of this was the Juan Manuel Lopez-Rogers Mtagwa fight in October. This looked sure to end early, yet it ended up going 12 rounds.

I haven’t seen Lopez and I don’t know anything about him other than what his record shows. He was stopped in five rounds by Nicaraguan fellow-southpaw William Gonzalez four years ago, but Gonzalez is a heavy hitter who is capable of knocking out most bantamweights if he hits them right.

However, Perez was down twice against a Nicaraguan boxer named Jose Elizabeth, although he rallied to win in seven rounds.

I get the impression that Perez is more of a fighter type than a slick boxer. I will be surprised if he boxes a safety-first fight for 12 rounds. At some point, Perez is likely to chance an attack, which is when he will be at risk of getting caught by the quick and sharp Japanese boxer.

There seems to be a huge difference in class in this fight. Perez has never fought outside of Nicaragua and he has certainly never met anyone as talented as Hasegawa.

A quick finish would surprise me, but I do expect Hasegawa to find the target and hurt Perez around the middle part of the fight; I’m thinking on the lines of a seventh-round win for the champion.