Superfly 3: A Hidden Gem

Superfly 3: A Hidden Gem

By Matthew Dean 

Big fights will always happen in combat sports but sometimes they can slip under the radar for those who don’t scrutinise the sports news religiously day in, day out. This is unfortunately the stark reality of the game and even genuine fight fans can miss out on these events.

With their promotional teams in full flight, matchups such as Canelo – Golovkin 2 and Joshua – Povetkin, it’s hard not to be aware of these as the advertisements are brandished before our eyes at very opportunity. However some fights take place without the majority of people knowing or watching them and that’s a shame. For the fighters themselves, for the sport as a whole and more importantly for fight-fans.

After the success of the World Boxing Super Series (WBSS) and a second series already lined up, a relaunch of boxing reality tv show “The Contender“ due on the screens and big name fights approaching, boxing has a busy schedule. However a missing gem, unless you know, is the rapidly approaching third instalment in the Superfly series.

Taking place at The Forum in Inglewood, California, on September 8th Tom Loeffler and HBO have put together this event featuring fighters from the Super Flyweight division (115 pounds or Junior Bantamweight).

The main event features Mexicans

Juan Francisco Estrada (36-3, 25 KOs), 28, a former unified flyweight titleholder, against countryman Felipe Orucuta, (36-4, 30 KO’s). Estrada has been one of the stars of the first two instalments in the Superfly series. In Superfly 1 he outpointed Carlos Cuadras in a hard fought battle to earn a shot at the WBC title in Superfly 2, against Srisaket Sor Rungvisai. The Thai boxer ended Estrada’s 10 fight winning streak and a rematch had been touted but Sor Rungvisai opted for an October defence in his native Thailand. Against Orucuta, Estrada will face a determined and hard-hitting challenge in an attempt to bounce back.

Donnie Nietes (41-1-4, 23 KOs), 36, , is looking for his fourth weight division belt when he fights Filipino Aston Palicte for the vacant 115-pound WBO belt, which Naoya Inoue. Having held belts at Light Flyweight, Minimumweight and Flyweight, Nietes is looking to emulate other Filipino 4 weight boxing champions Manny Pacquiao and Nonito Donaire.

Nietes is unbeaten in 14 years which make him the longest reigning Filipino champion and featured on the Superfly 2 card in a seventh-round knockout of Juan Carlos Reveco.

Palicte nonetheless in his first world title fight is determined to pull off the biggest victory of his career. He had stated that there was nothing personal in battling his countryman but one of the unique features in this fight is that Palicte defeated Gerald Nietes, Donnie’s cousin during their amateur days, so revenge is certainly on the cards for the sake of family honour.

Another hugely unique feature of this fight is, that this will be only the 3rd title fight in almost 100 years where two Filipinos face off. The only other occasion of this since 1925 was Jerwin Ancajas vs Jonas Sultan in May 2018.

Kazuto Ioka (22-1, 13 KOs), 29, who has held titles in the strawweight, junior flyweight and flyweight categories is coming out of retirement for this event as well to battle against a two-time flyweight title challenger McWilliams Arroyo (17-3, 14 KOs), 32, of Puerto Rico, in a scheduled 10-round bout. Kazuto hasn’t fought since April 2017. To complicate matters, in his comeback fight and first matchup outside of Japan he is moving up a weight limit to boot.

Arroyo can punch and was a good amateur, although as a professional, despite being competitive at world level, he has never been a world champion and has been relatively inactive, only fighting once since April 2016 in his win over Carlos Cuadras.

In total the triple header is a series of potentially fantastic matchups. As a boxing fan I can only hope that the Superfly series will grow in popularity and renown. Boxing needs more events like this to bring the sport back to the masses. For too long it had been missing or tucked away where we can’t find it.

Superfly will be televised HBO