Emanuel Navarrete (32-1) will be defending his WBO featherweight title against Christopher Diaz (26-2) on saturday night in Kissimmee, Florida. Navarrete has looked very impressive in every fight since he beat Isaac Dogboe by a 12 round decision. In their rematch he stopped Dogboe in the final round and he has been going very strong ever since then. First of all he was a big puncher for the super bantamweight division so he stopped many guys early in fights and when he faced better fighters, they still couldn´t handle his constant pressure and his ability to throw a lot of punches for the duration of the fights. He has a good engine on him. Physically he was very big and strong at 122 pounds. Last year he finally moved up to featherweight and fought Ruben Villa for the vacant WBO title and he won a decision and dropped Villa twice. He proved that his power and strength held up in the new division. The challenger Christopher Diaz is an experienced fighter himself and he has been fighting at the featherweight limit or higher for the last 8 years so he is used to fighting bigger guys in theory although Navarrete is bigger than most featherweights also. Diaz looks strong physically but his defense has holes. He takes chances when moving forward and trying to punch at the same time as his opponents and that leaves him open to counters some times. It happened in his fight against Masayuki Ito where he got caught with big clean ounches and was knocked down hard. He was close to getting stopped in that fight after the knockdown when Itu jumped after him but to his credit he showed his toughness and he regrouped himself and fought good for the rest of the fight. His other loss came to Shakur Stevenson in a fight where he was outclassed but most guys would be outclassed technically when in there with Shakur Stevenson so there is no shame in that. Navarrete is a big favorite to win this fight and he is currently priced at -850 (1.12 decimal odds) and Diaz at +600 as the highest.
We are not fully confident that Christopher Diaz can take the hard punches that Navarrete will be hitting him with in this fight because he gets hit too clean and against a big puncher like Navarrete who mixes it up well to the body and head it feels like Diaz will take too many of those clean punches and ultimately get stopped. Currently the method of win odds are not released yet so we are satisfied with the -850 (1.12 decimal odds) here because there are not many scenarios we can envision that sees Diaz getting the win here and their styles favor Navarrete also. The Pick is Emanuel Navarrete to win this fight and be on the look-out for an additional as the fight gets closer.