By Manuel Perez: In a showcase for three young unbeaten prospects, flyweight Ryonta Whitfield (21-0, 10 KOs), Fernando Guerrero (5-0, 5 KOs) and Michael Davis (6-0, 3 KOs) all emerged victories in their bouts on Wednesday night at the Bell Auditorium, in Augusta, Georgia. None of the prospects, aside from the 21 year-old Guerrero, looked very promising in terms of future championship caliber material, however. The fighter the closest to getting a shot at the title, #2 ranked WBO flyweight contender Ryonta Whitfield, 26, looked by far the worse of the bunch as he barely defeated Mexican Manuel Vargas 24-3, 10 KOs) by a majority decision scores of 117-111, 116-112 and 114-114.
At 5’7”, Whitfield looked like a slender beanpole, reminding me a lot of former 80s-90s welterweight champion Maurice Blocker, only without his power. In that department, Whitfield was sorely lacking and was forced to land a high volume of jabs in order to pull out the decision. Vargas, who wasn’t expected fight competitively, took the fight to Whitefield and easily won the first two rounds with power punching. After that, however, Vargas’s punch output dropped off to next to nothing until the 11th and 12th rounds, when he came storming back with power shots.
Especially in the 12th round, Vargas battered the rail-thin Whitfield around the ring, snapping his head back with shot after shot. Unfortunately for Vargas, he had given up too many other rounds in the fight, which cost him in the end when it came time for the scores to be read. However, it was still an impressive performance from Vargas given the fact that nothing had been expected of him in the fight. As for Whitfield, his lack of power and build will be a problem for him when he steps it up against the current WBO champion Omar Narvaez.
If Whitfield is having problems with a relatively light-punching fighter like Vargas, I’d had to think what will happen to Whitfield when he goes up against Narvaez or against Nonito Donaire, the IBF flyweight champion, both of whom would make quick work of him in my firm belief.
In other action, undefeated super featherweight prospect Michael Davis (6-0, 3 KOs) looked equally poor in defeating Sadot Vazquez (3-2-1, 1 KOs) by a six-round unanimous decision. Vazquez, 29, was coming into the fight having been off for a year and a half, having been stopped in his last fight. Davis, 21, showed zero power and an almost nonexistent defense as he was hit repeatedly by Vazquez during the bout. Davis rarely was able to mount his own offense, instead opting to counter punch for the entire bout. To this, he did well, but because he was limited to waiting for Vazquez to come forward, this meant that Davis ended up getting hit a lot by Vazquez, whom he was expected to easily beat going into the fight. Vazquez looked especially well late in the first round when he landed a high number of big right hands to the head of Davis, and turning the round completely around after having been dominated for most of the round.
Ultimately, Davis knocked Vazquez down in the 4th and 6th round, but in both cases it was more of a case of a flash knockdown rather than Vazquez being hurt by Davis’ weak shots. Rather than David finishing the fight on a strong note in the 6th, it was Vazquez who was seen battering Davis around the ring in the last 30 seconds, looking more like the better prospect than Davis. All told, it was an eye-opening experience watching Davis, and I based on what I’ve seen of him, I can’t see him ever being a champion in the super featherweight division.
Champions like Manny Pacquiao, Edwin Valero, Joan Guzman and Mzonke Fana, would knock Davis out with ease. Not only do they throw bunches at a high rate like Davis, but they also have much more power than he does. They also know how to come forward and take the fight to their opponents and aren’t limited to counter-punching like Davis.
Easily the best fighter of the night was undefeated 21 year-old Fernando Guerrero (5-0, 5 KOs) who ended up stopping a badly overmatched Valentino Jalomo (2-3-1, 2 KOs) in the 4th round of a scheduled 4-round bout. Guerrero showed enormous punching power, albeit only throwing one shot at a time and without much speed. Jalomo, 30, was never into the fight as he had no offense to speak of and pretty much just stood in front of Guerrero all fight taking tremendous shots from him. In the opening moments of the fight, the southpaw Guerrero was teeing off with straight left hands and right hooks, each of which were snapping Jalomo’s head back and forth. I figured then that the fight wouldn’t last more than a round.
However, Guerrero never seemed to be able to put more than one punch together at a time, spending a lot of the time admiring his work and waiting to see if Jalomo would drop after he would hit him. This cost him because his power, although quite exceptional, wasn’t the type of one-punch power needed to knock out a fighter with an excellent chin like Jalomo. As such, Jalomo stuck around for almost the entire fight, receiving two standing eight counts in the first after getting hit with big left hand shots, and staggered twice in the 2nd round.
Finally, in the fourth round Guerrero put brief flurry of punches together causing the referee Brian Stutts to move in and halt the fight at 1:42 of the 4th round. Even then, Guerrero looked slow and mechanical, as if he were muscle-bound. The win, while somewhat impressive due to his display of punching power, pales considerably in contrast to another super middleweight prospect Daniel Jacobs, who can punch with even more power, using combinations and boxing skills along with it. Guerrero clearly isn’t in his league as a fighter, though he is better than a lot of the top 15 super middleweights in my estimation.
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