Fox Sports 1 Quick Pick

Manuel Avila vs. Erik Ruiz: In recent years there has been an influx of young, talented fighters who have undefeated records.  One of this fighters is Manuel Avila (16-0, 7 KO) who despite not having faced any top fighters has shown some real talent.  This Thursday on Fox Sports 1, Avila will face off against Erik Ruiz (13-2, 6 KO) in a junior featherweight bout scheduled to go 10 rounds.  Clearly the pugilist to pay attention to in this bout is Avila who looks like he could have a bright future.  The young Avila has a busy jab which lands consistently out of the orthodox stance.  To go along with that jab Avila also has a nice looking left hook and he throws a quality uppercut with his right hand.  However, along with that talent comes some flaws that young fighters need to work on.  Avila tends to get wild with his right hand and will often drop his left that has left him open in the past and he is a fighter who will take a decent amount of clean punches upstairs.  One thing to note is that Avila has had numerous 10-round fights while his opponent Ruiz has never gone 10 rounds and has only faced one quality opponent, a loss to Jessie Magdaleno.  Ruiz is a fighter who slips punches well and does a nice job of attacking both the head and body.  While Ruiz doesn't have much on his punches, he is an accurate puncher.  Ruiz has a pretty decent jab and left hook but his best punch may be his counter right hand.  Expect Ruiz to give a good account of himself early and give Ruiz some tough rounds.  However, later in the fight Ruiz's inexperience in 10-round fights will show and he will start to slow down while Avila steps on the gas.  This should be a pretty close fight but one that Avila wins by the way of unanimous decision.