Former two-division world champion Juan Franciso Estrada is ready to return up at bantamweight.

Estrada, who won WBA and WBO flyweight titles before jumping to junior bantamweight where he held Ring, WBA and WBC titles, will face Karim Arce, on Saturday, at CUM, in Hermosillo, in Mexico.

"I'm very excited to get back in the ring after my loss last year," Estrada (44-4, 28 knockouts) told The Ring through promoter Juan Hernandez of Latin Sports, who co-promotes Estrada with Zanfer. "I am looking forward to getting the W against Arce and moving on to hopefully a title shot at 118 pounds soon."

The last time we saw Estrada, he traded knockdowns with pound-for-pound star Jesse Rodriguez last June, but was later stopped for the first time in his likely hall of fame career.

"Not to make excuses, but I feel like I wasn't 100 percent ready mentally, I was dealing with some personal issues leading up to that fight or physically and combined with Bam's solid performance, he was the better man that night," he said. "Had I been fully ready for the fight, I think the result could have been different since it was an even fight up until he caught me."

The 35-year-old Mexican warrior held a rematch clause with Rodriguez but elected not to evoke it and has made changes in his time off to his team.

"My team and I decided not to go forward with the rematch since the fight had to take place pretty soon after the first fight and we didn't think we would have enough time to recover from the loss and make some changes," he explained. "I had a very solid run with [head trainer Alfredo] Caballero and we decided it was time to change it up. So, I am working with the brothers German and Alfredo Leon, who I am familiar with for many years in Sonora.

"We asked Bam's team if we could extend the time frame for the rematch and were told that was not possible, so we decided not to take it."

Estrada will now snap a year of inactivity to step inside the ring in his hometown for the first time since 2022.

"My family and I decided to take a long break after the loss," he said. "The last few years I've had to take long layoff times due to healing injuries, so this layoff wasn't much different."

Having achieved all he could at 115-pounds, 'El Gallo' felt now was the right time to move onto new horizons in a bid to rejuvenate and add more hardware to his collection.

"Now that I'm in my mid-30s, I've had to work a lot harder for the weight and it has become more difficult to make 115 pounds," he said. "My team and I felt that it was a good time to move up a division and look for big fights at 118 pounds.

"I feel like I have several fights left and I would like to win a world title at 118 and bring the fans more exciting fights. I would like to fight any of the 118-pound champions from Japan or someone like Tenshin Nasukawa.

"I would like to be able to rematch against Bam Rodriguez at some point. I have avenged all of my loses in my career and think I could do that against Bam in a rematch."

Arce (21-2-2, 8 KOs) turned professional at 17, in 2015. The nephew of Jorge Arce reeled off 13 wins before being held to a draw by Juan Jimenez (MD 8). He was able to beat faded former world champion Alexander Munoz (UD 8) but suffered setbacks against David Cuellar (KO 9) and Jesus Arias (TKO 7).

After some time away, the 27-year-old ended a two-year hiatus last summer with a win over Kevin Villanueva (UD 8).