Jaime Munguia (42-0, 33 KOs), now campaigning at super middleweight, edged Sergiy Derevyanchenko (14-5, 10 KOs) by a razor-close twelve round unanimous decision on Saturday night
Munguia, 26, dropped Derevyanchenko with a left to the body in the twelfth round to win, albeit by an unpopular decision. Boxing fans call it a robbery, saying Sergiy did more than enough to deserve the win.
After the fight, Derevyanchenko said he wanted a rematch with Munguia, but that’s not likely to happen. Munguia wants the bigger money fights, and he isn’t going to take any chances in a rematch.
This is Munguia’s second controversial win in his career. In 2019, Munguia won a questionable 12 round majority decision over Dennis Hogan in Monterrey, Mexico, and he was booed loudly by his own fans.
Derevyanchenko got the better of Munguia in the early going, hurting him badly in rounds three and five.
Munguia barely made it out of those rounds without getting knocked out because he looked ready to go. Derevyanchenko controlled the action until the twelfth.
After the fight, Munguia called out WBC interim super middleweight champion David Benavidez. If that fight gets made, it would be huge.
Derevyanchenko outboxed Munguia through the first ten rounds, and appeared to have an insurmountable lead going into the twelfth, but the three judges saw it differently. They gave it to Munguia with the scores:
- 114-113 – Rudy Barragan
- 115-112 – Lou Moret
- 114-113 – Fernando Villarreal
“Tough fight, but he pulled it off. No one has ever knocked him down, Derevyanchenko. He’s a tough guy,” said Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya to Fight Hub TV, following Jaime Munguia’s come-from-behind win over Sergiy Derevyanchenko tonight.
“He needed the last round just like that to pull off the fight,” De La Hoya continued about Munguia.
“That he can fight at the highest level of the fighters at the elite level, like [Jermall] Charlo, like GGG. He just proved it. He knocked down Derevyanchenko. Nobody ever did that,” said Oscar.
You can’t blame De La Hoya for not following Derevyanchenko’s career closely enough to know that Gennadiy Golovkin dropped him in the first round of their fight in 2019.
Derevyanchenko was younger then and not the 37-year-old version of himself that Munguia beat by what some boxing fans felt was a gift decision tonight.
