Freddie Roach confident Jaime Munguia will stop John Ryder

Jaime Munguia is a supremely talented boxer. The WBC Silver Super Middleweight champion is 42-0 with a lot of big scalps along the way.

He outboxed Liam Smith and Takeshi Inoue, while stopping Kamil Szeremeta and D’Metrius Ballard. Coming off of a nine-fight, four year run with trainer Erik Morales, Munguia has been working with legendary trainer Freddie Roach as he prepares for his clash with John Ryder.

Roach has worked with Manny Pacquiao, Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Amir Khan, Wladimir Klitschko, Jorge Linares, Jean Pascal, Guillermo Rigondeaux… the list is almost endless. In blunt speaking, Freddie Roach is one of the best in the business.

And what that all means is that when Freddie talks, what he says is worth listening to. And he says that fears about Munguia’s readiness are unfounded.

“There’s a big thing out there that he has poor defense and so forth. He doesn’t have poor defense. We work on those things every day. He’s a complete fighter and that’s why he’s going to win the fight,” says Roach.

Addressing criticism of Munguia’s perceived laziness in the gym, Roach continues, “I think his work ethic is a lot better than most. He comes to the gym everyday wanting to work. We work really well together. I push him and he pushes me. We work the mitts together and a lot of combinations. People who say he’s a single puncher and stuff like that are full of shit.”

But a fight is never one-sided. There is always another man in the ring with you, throwing shots back at you. And across the ring from Jaime Munguia will be a man every bit as experienced at this enormous world stage as he is. But Roach isn’t concerned.

“I saw a lot of tape on Ryder. He’s a decent fighter, but he’s not as good as us.”

Ryder has lost six times in his career, but they have all been against world-class competition. Billy Joe Saunders got a decision win and Nick Blackwell stopped him, but his biggest-name losses were to Callum Smith and Canelo Álvarez. Asked whether a win over Ryder would set Munguia up for a title fight, Roach answered, “A 100 percent yes. This will break the doors for us. We want the biggest and baddest guy out there next, and we’ll see.”

Asked what he thought the outcome of the fight would look like, Roach was confident, stating that Jaime Munguia would score a knockout “inside of eight rounds.”

Those are bold words, particularly against a fighter as tough to crack as Ryder.