Rene Palacios

Bio

Rene Palacios is the Mexican featherweight nobody outside hardcore U.S. boxing circles has heard of yet — and the man Bruce Carrington has to get through on July 4 in Cleveland to keep his pound-for-pound trajectory on track. Palacios is 19-0-1 with 10 knockouts and arrives at world-title level the way most Mexican featherweights do — proper hard rounds against good domestic opposition, a couple of regional belts collected along the way, and a willingness to fight on someone else's lawn.

What you get with Palacios is the classic Mexican featherweight package: pressure, body work, properly heavy hands when he plants his feet, and a chin that hasn't been cracked yet. He's not a sit-back-and-counter operator. He'll come forward, force the exchanges, and make the champion fight every minute of every round. That style is exactly the test you'd want to give Carrington before unification talks at 126 start in earnest.

Make no mistake, the lone draw on Palacios' record means he's got something to prove on the biggest night of his career. Cleveland on the Fourth of July, the launch night for "The Fight" series, against the WBC featherweight champion in his backyard — that's a proper test for both men. If Palacios can land his right hand cleanly inside the first six rounds, this fight gets very interesting very quickly.