Yuriorkis Gamboa To Face Al Seeger On Friday

By Dan Ambrose: Undefeated super featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (10-0, 8 KOs) will be facing Al Seeger (27-3, 21 KOs) in a scheduled 10-round bout at the Buffalo Bill’s Resort & Casino in Primm, Nevada on Friday night. Gamboa, 26, a former 2004 Olympic Gold Medalist from Cuba, was originally scheduled to face WBA number #2 ranked super featherweight Jose Rojas, but he pulled out suddenly, making the need to find a last minute replacement for the fight. Seeger, 28, a super bantamweight was found to replace Gamboa. Seeger has lost his last two bouts, being defeated by Daniel Ponce de Leon and Mike Oliver, so one could conclude that this fight may be over very early with Gamboa quickly destroying Seeger in a round or two.

Gamboa, 26, ranked #3 in the WBA and WBC, is coming off a disappointing performance in his last bout in May against Darling Jimenez, in which Gamboa was knocked down in the 4th round of the bout, but eventually won the fight by a 10-round unanimous decision. Gamboa, a fighter that is known for his quick knockouts and heavy pressure, showed signs of wearing down as early as the 5th round against Jimenez. As he usually does, Gamboa bum rushed Jimenez early in the fight, throwing a down pour of punches in hopes of scoring another quick knockout, but Jimenez, a tough fighter with a good chin, had little problem handling Gamboa’s shots, and then began landing even bigger shots of his own. In the 4th round, an already tired-looking Gamboa was knocked down by a big right hand from Jimenez.

Though Gamboa got up and weathered the storm, he didn’t look impressive, certainly not like a future champion, which many boxing fans had been predicting of him going into the fight with Jimenez. At the same time, the bout showed that Gamboa’s defense is pretty much nonexistent, as Jimenez was able to land often with right hands and left hooks to the head of Gamboa. The fatigue was one thing, but Gamboa’s terrible defense seemed the worst of it, for it seemed to indicate that he wasn’t as flawless as people had thought, and that he didn’t appear to have the boxing skills as of yet to be a future champion.

Aside from his poor defense, even his offense wasn’t exactly impressive either, with many of his amateurish missing badly or hitting mostly gloves. In his prior fights, he’d looked impressive with his early flurries, most of which would lead to a quick knockout. But, when the knockout didn’t occur in the first few rounds in the Jimenez fight, Gamboa looked almost silly as he wasted both his time and energy throwing flurries against Jimenez, who wasn’t going to be taken out by the C and D level fighters that Gamboa had been facing up to this point.

Instead of making adjustments given his much better opponent, Gamboa continued throwing short flurries, most either missing or being picked off, and leaving him open for big counter shots from Jimenez. This inability to make changes in his fighting style caused one to wonder whether Gamboa really does have the talent to be a champion. He certainly has some of the skills, at least offensively, but being stuck in a high gear offensive style more suited to landing early knockouts, wasn’t something that would work over the long haul.

Of course, there have been fighters that have successfully used this style of fighting, Aaron Pryor being one example. However, with Pryor, he had excellent stamina, and would never show signs of wearing down early in the fight like Gamboa. Pryor also had much better defense than Gamboa has shown, and never got hit over and over again like Gamboa was against Jimenez.

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