Cintron & Gomez: What Now?

By Boxing News - 04/15/2008 - Comments

cintron-gomez1.jpgBy Peter Kurth: This last weekend was particularly hard on former IBF welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (29-2, 27 KOs) and former star from The Contender Alfonso Gomez (18-4-2, 8 KOs), both of which were destroyed by their opponents Miguel Cotto and Antonio Margarito.

Of the two, Gomez took the worse beating, but then again, he was never excepted to be very competitive in the first place, having been brought in largely for an easy payday for the WBA welterweight champion Cotto. Certainly Cotto deserved an easy fight after having fought Zab Judah and Shane Mosley in back to back fights, but there was hope by some that Gomez might have a sliver of a chance against Cotto.

It didn’t turn out that way, unfortunately for Gomez, who was knocked down three times in the bout, in the 2nd, 3rd and fifth rounds, while he moved around the ring with poor balance and unable to get his shots off due to the constant incoming fire from Cotto. At any rate, while the loss was somewhat embarrassing, I imagine, the fight still gave Gomez a lot of attention, even if it was the bad kind. He still an excellent welterweight, and I firmly believe he can still be a force in the division, perhaps even get another shot at one of the titles. Look at Carlos Quintana, for instance, he was beaten just as easily by Cotto, losing by a 5th round stoppage in December 2006.

Look at Quintana now; he’s the WBO welterweight champion after having defeated Paul Williams recently, a fight in which few people gave Quintana much of a chance. While we’re at it, Pauli Malignaggi, a light welterweight, is another fighter that Cotto gave a tremendous beating to en route to a 12-round unanimous decision in June 2006. Malignaggi is now the IBF light welterweight champion. One might say that good things happen sometimes to former opponents of Cotto, although it helps to have enough talent to make it happen.

In Gomez’s case, it’s unclear whether he has the talent to make it to the top, but I still think he is better than just a sawhorse for the young and up and coming welterweights. Personally, I’d like to see him matched against someone like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Andre Berto, Luis Collazo, Zab Judah or ideally, Cintron. Any one of them would be an excellent matchup, and I think Gomez would have a good chance at beating some of them, in particular, Chavez Jr., Judah and Cintron. Gomez, when not facing a murderous puncher like Cotto, usually throws a lot of punches and applies tons of pressure much like Margarito.

For that reason, I think he’d be more than a tough match for Cintron, who showed that he couldn’t deal with Margarito’s nonstop punching onslaught. If I know Cintron, he won’t want to take an easy fight in his next bout, feeling that would be a step down and something he wouldn’t feel good about. Gomez would be the perfect opponent for him, a fighter with a relatively big name, well known to many boxing fans, and someone that can give him a competitive fight.

Cintron’s ego obviously took a major hit on Saturday night, and it’s clear he was overestimating his own abilities, thinking that he had improved in the last three years since his last one-sided 5th round TKO loss to Margarito in 2005. As it turns out, Cintron looked virtually the same, getting dominated the whole by Margarito. In fact, it was much worse this time in that Margarito controlled every round instead of just the 4th and 5th like last time. The loss is disappointing, but not fatal for Cintron, who still remains a factor in the division due to his popularity with fans.

At 28, he’s still young enough to remain at the top for the next five years. His problem is that his style of fighting isn’t suited for an opponent like Margarito; That is, a fighter with a swarming, nonstop punching attack, along with an excellent chin. However, Cintron hits harder than any other welterweight in the division, and that alone gives him a chance against anyone other than Margarito, who proved that he has Cintron’s number. Cintron needs to go after the WBO welterweight title, currently held by Carlos Quintana.

He’ll have to wait until Quintana fights his rematch with Paul Williams in June, but after that, Cintron would make for an ideal opponent for the winner of that bout. I figure that Quintana will once again emerge the winner, since he proved in the first fight to have a style that’s difficult for the slender Williams to cope with. While Cintron doesn’t have the nonstop punching attack of a fighter like Williams or Margarito, he does have more power than either of them. For that reason, Cintron would figure to be an even more dangerous opponent for Quintana, who showed that he’s vulnerable to power shots in his fight with Cotto.



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