Andres Quintana and Bruno Cannetti will lock horns for the Combate Americas featherweight title on Friday night. This is a rematch of a previous contest, where Quintana won by first round knockout. The result doesn’t tell the entire story, and I’d encourage you to watch the fight before moving on with this breakdown.
Andres Quintana
The first thing you’ll notice about Quintana is that he’s absolutely huge for the featherweight division. He’s extremely imposing as he walks opponents down and unleashes boxing combinations to the head and body. Although he looks taller and longer than most of the opponents he’s faced, he seems to prefer working in the mid-range.
As is clear to see in Quintana’s first fight with Cannetti, he’s incredibly hard to put away and is able to rally from behind in order to win. Against his last opponent, Alejandro Flores, Quintana was taking a beating before changing the complexion of the fight in an instant with a hellish spinning back elbow.
I haven’t seen much of Quintana’s ground game, but that’s mainly because his takedown defense is extremely good. Quintana rarely wrestles offensively, which makes me think we’re in for a standing brawl on Friday – just like the last fight.As far as negative traits go, Quintana’s striking style seems boxing-centric, and thus he doesn’t deal with kicks well. He’s absorbed a lot of low kicks in the fights I’ve watched and his opponent is an excellent kicker.
Bruno Cannetti
If you recognise Bruno’s last name, it’s because he’s the brother of Argentinian UFC veteren, Guido Cannetti. Like his brother, Bruno’s striking style is centred around his kicks. However, Bruno’s ability to pace himself seems much better than his brother and he’s also the more competent grappler (not that I think it will be relevant in this contest).
Although he switches stances, Cannetti is primarily a southpaw. In the opening stages of his first fight with Quintana (who stands orthodox), you can see Cannetti land a powerful left body kick to the open side. I could be wrong, but it looked as if Quintana was keeping his hands low to protect the body afterwards – which immediately opened up the punches to the head from Cannetti.
It’s also relevant the Agentinian landed a powerful inside leg kick in the first fight. The shot looked impactful and if we see a longer fight this time around, those low kicks could add up and have Quintana limping.
Who Wins?
Even if you thought the first fight was stopped prematurely, it’s easy to see why Quintana is the favorite. He’s much bigger, has the superior boxing and punching boxer, has the more impressive record and won the first fight emphatically.
However, this fight has all the signs of a wild shootout and I don’t think it’s smart to play Quintana as a -400 favorite (especially given his susceptibility to leg kicks).
I threw half a unit on Cannetti as a +345 underdog, which carries an implied probability of 22.5%. I don’t know whether he’ll win, but based on the first fight his chances of victory should be a lot higher than 22.5%!
Pick: Bruno Cannetti +345
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