YONNHY PEREZ vs ABNER MARES

Years ago the great British manager and matchmaker Mickey Duff was talking about a fight in which he had great difficulty in making up his mind on the possible outcome. One day, he said, he decided one fighter would win, the next day he was liking the other man’s chances.

Many of us have shared Duff’s dilemma. There are fights in which such a strong case can be made for either man that uncertainty is unavoidable.

Such a fight, I feel, is the bantamweight title bout between Yonnhy Perez and Abner mares on Showtime on Saturday night.

Each man has won 20 consecutive bouts.

Perez, the Colombian defending champion, has beaten far tougher opposition than Mares has faced.

Mares, though, was a gifted amateur (Olympic representative for Mexico, Pan American Games silver medallist) and he beat Perez in two out of three bout when they were in the amateurs, which includes a clear win for Mares, 26-19 on the electronic scoring system, in the semifinals of the 2003 Pan Ams in the Dominican Republic.

Perez, 31, has proven himself in the fires of world-class competition. Behind on points, he knocked out Silence Mabuza in the final round of their championship elimination match in South Africa a year ago, while last October he pulled off a second consecutive upset victory by outpointing Joseph Agbeko in Las Vegas to become IBF champion.

The judges had Perez winning widely over Agbeko but to most observers this looked like a close contest. “Some of those rounds were so close they were decided by just one or two hard punches,” one of the judges later told me.

Mares has fought no one anywhere near as talented and dangerous as Mabuza or Agbeko. Mares’s best win was probably his second-round blowout of Diosdado Gabi a couple of years ago, but the Filipino southpaw had drained himself making weight (I learned of this on the day of the fight) and hasn’t boxed since.

Otherwise, Mares has been doing what was expected of him, outclassing journeyman-type opponents — apart, that is, from what seems to have been a hard-fought six-rounder against a willing but limited fighter named Saul Gutierrez three years ago in Texas.

So, the 24-year-old Mares is taking a huge step up in class on Saturday.

Perez is a durable, competent, exceptionally hardworking fighter. He has a room in the house of his trainer, Danny Zamora, at Santa Fe Springs, California, and I understand that his only luxuries are his TV, stereo system and cell phone: he sends practically all his money home to support his wife and two children in Colombia.

Anyone who gets in the ring with Perez is guaranteed a gruelling evening. Perez keeps the punches flowing and he is the type of fighter who looks just as strong and fast in the last round as he did in the first.

Mares’s shrewd manager, Frank Espinoza, believes that the time is right his boxer, however, and Mares has a confident way about him.

Perez and Mares are friends outside the ring and once they shared accommodation, but they will be all business on Saturday.

I get the impression with Mares that he strongly feels he has the beating of Perez, perhaps based on their rivalry in the amateurs. He carries himself like a boxer who feels that he knows something that the rest of the world doesn’t.

Perez has shown that he can prevail in a long, tough fight, which Mares hasn’t. Mares, though, could be the type of fighter who can rise to the occasion. He is a clever, well-put-together boxer-puncher with excellent combinations.

We know what to expect from Perez. He comes straight ahead and brings pressure, tenacity and a high punch-output. He was, for me, always winning the fight against Agbeko. However, I don’t think that Agbeko was at his best that night. The boxer from Ghana was, I think, just a little too full of himself after his upset win over Vic Darchinyan. Agbeko entered the ring for the Halloween bout wearing a gorilla outfit, led on a chain by a young woman got up to resemble the 1930s screen goddess of King Kong fame, Fay Wray.

I picked Agbeko to win that fight but when I saw his entrance I knew the pick was in trouble. He sauntered into the ring in a ridiculous (some might even say offensive) arrival, as if he all he had to do was show up to win.

To me, Perez was ready to get right down to brass tacks and fight, and Agbeko wasn’t.

So, as gritty and impressive as Perez was that night, I had the impression that he was meeting an off-form Agbeko, who found himself caught up in the type of fight he hadn’t expected.

In the fight with Mabuza, there were a couple of rounds where I thought that the South African fighter hurt Perez to the body. Mabuza was winning the fight although he was having to dig deep, and he swept the 11th round in the scoring. Instead of playing it safe in the 12th, though, Mabuza steamed into Perez and got caught and dropped by a stiff left jab. Maybe it was because he hadn’t been expecting that punch, or perhaps because punches he had taken in earlier rounds suddenly caught up with him, but Mabuza never recovered and was quickly overwhelmed after the eight count.

After being stretched to the limit in the fight with Mabuza, and having had to fight flat out for 12 rounds to take the title from Agbeko, Perez now faces his third consecutive high-stakes, potentially punishing, contest. Mares, meanwhile, is young, strong and fresh and has been moving towards this moment, mentally and physically, since turning professional five years ago.

I think that Mares is ready for this ambitious challenge. He has a capable trainer in the ex-fighter Joel Diaz, and to see him in the ring it is clear that he is an intelligent, alert and well-schooled young boxer.

Mares has said that he will win because he has more dimensions than Perez, being able to box, move and counter as well as moving towards his man. Perez is a forbidding opponent, but Mares might have the speed, smarts and variety to get the win. His hand speed and body punches could trouble Perez, but of course we do not know — but will soon find out — if Mares can stand up to the sort of pace that Perez will be setting.

The sportsbooks opened the fight basically at pick ’em and since then money has shown for both sides, with most of the money coming in on Mares to make him a slight favourite with the sporting public. With the fight now less than 24 hours away, I am swaying towards Mares. He will have to weather rougher passages than he has ever had to face, but I am getting the sense that he can do it. We know what Perez can do and we cannot be sure about Mares but, nonetheless, I will, after deep consideration, put my faith in Mares’s superior boxing skill and, more than this, his potential. I think he can find within him what it takes to endure what he has to endure and land the body punches and fast bursts of blows that will take him to a very hard-earned points win.