JUAN CARLOS BURGOS vs VYACHESLAV GUSEV

Unbeaten featherweight prospect Juan Carlos Burgos is expected to continue his forward march on Friday but he has an interesting test, perhaps his toughest, when he meets Vyacheslav Gusev, a Russian who has lost just once in 17 bouts.

The people at Thompson boxing are moving Burgos along nicely and they believe that the 21-year-old from, Tijuana is getting better with every fight. Friday’s scheduled 10-rounder is a fight he should win, but Gusev is one of those unknown quantities and on paper he looks useful. Gusev clearly isn’t an especially hard hitter (just three stoppage wins) but his last two fights were unanimous decision wins in 12-rounders against boxers with winning records. One of these victories was over the Ugandan Olympic representative Abdu Tebazalwa, who gave the tough Mongolian Choi Tseveenpurev a spirited 12-round battle in the U.K. If Gusev is good enough to beat the likes of Tebazalwa, he must have some ability.

Burgos is an aggressive, crowd-pleasing fighter and he is obviously the superior puncher in Friday’s bout. In his last fight he blew away Fernando Omar Lizarraga in fine style, dropping his fellow-Mexican twice with left hooks. Lizarraga, though, had been stopped in his last two fights and didn’t have much punch-resistance.

Before meeting Lizarraga, Burgos had a surprisingly difficult fight against the Colombian veteran Jesus Perez — just one round on one card from being a draw on the scorecards. This had me wondering if perhaps he has some limitations that might get exposed when he meets the higher-level fighters, but a southern California contact tells me that Burgos in reality beat Perez more comfortably than the scores suggested although he was outhustled a bit in the beginning.

Friday’s site favours Burgos — the Doubletree Hotel in Ontario, CA, is like a home from home for him — whereas Gusev has never boxed outside of Russia or its environs. Gusev, though, is a young fighter who is used to winning, and Russian boxers are usually well schooled.

I don’t make Burgos a massive favourite but I think that he will probably punch a bit too hard and bring a bit too much pressure for Gusev to be able to handle and I take the Mexican fighter to win a well-contested, unanimous decision.