By Erik Schmidt: After jumping off to an impressive 14-0 start, former Cuban amateur standout Yoan Pablo Hernandez (16-1, 10 KOs) has looked less than impressive in his last three starts, losing one of them by Wayne Braithwaite by a disappointing 3rd round TKO in March, and then once again looking less awe inspiring in his recent fight last Saturday night, a 5th round TKO over 35 year-old Santiago De Paula (10-8-1, 10 KOs) in Berlin, Germany.
Hernandez, still ranked high at #15 in the World Boxing Association and IBF cruiserweight division, knocked De Paula down three times in the fight round alone, yet wasn’t able to put him away. This was the same problem that Hernandez has in his fight with Braithwaite, whom he knocked down once in the first round and staggered badly a later on, and then let him off the hook by fighting much too relaxed.
Braithwaite, as it turns out, would come roaring back to hurt Hernandez in the third round and take him out. Seeming not to have learned from his mistake against Braithwaite, Hernandez appeared to let off after badly hurting the hard-punching De Paula in the 3rd round, again, possibly thinking that the fight was in the bag and that he could take him out with ease anytime he so chose. Instead, however, De Paula stayed in the fight long enough to expose Hernandez’s poor conditioning – as he began to tire badly by the 3rd round – and also seemed to cause him to look stressed when being pressured hard. There’s no doubt that Hernandez won every round of the fight, but he looked exhausted, frightened and anything but a top 15 fighter against his C-class opponent.
This was the type of fighter that a world class fighter like Hernandez should have easily have beaten without working up much of a sweat, yet Hernandez was pushed hard by him and had to fight hard to eventually get the win in the 5th round. De Paula didn’t really land any meaningful punches until the 3rd round when he began to connect with regularity with big looping left hands to the head of the 6’4″ Hernandez.
His job was made much easier for the fact that Hernandez was sweating like he’d sat through a 30 minute sauna, tired beyond belief and weak from just three rounds of short work. De Paula had nothing in the way of boxing skills, looking as if he were brought in off the street to fight Hernandez. Constantly, De Paula would lose his mouthpiece when being punches, one after another, over and over again. When he wasn’t losing his mouthpiece, he was throwing the ugliest punches that I think I’ve ever seen in my life, missing most of the by a mile.
However, he troubled Hernandez when he would land and his pressure caused the former Cuban star to melt down quickly as if he were a lump of ice under a hot sun. By the 4th round, Hernandez looked like a complete embarrassment, with the German crowd sitting in their seats uneasily watching Hernandez, who now lives in fights out of Germany after leaving Cuba in 2006, struggle badly with his seemingly over-matched opponent. Even in Hernandez’s corner, there were a lot of long faces as if he were losing the fight. He wasn’t losing by a long shot.
In fact, he was winning every round, but he looked so bad in doing so, it was almost the same as if he were losing the fight. In the 5th round, Hernandez connected with a good right-left combination that sent De Paula bouncing off the ropes, hurt but still standing. The referee then jumped in much too quickly, in my estimation, and stopped the fight. It was a bad stoppage, because I think De Paula could have recovered easily and perhaps even beaten Hernandez.
To say that Hernandez looked terrible would be too kind. He was truly awful, and it’s unclear whether he has the chin, the maturity and the conditioning to improve on his recent bad performances. At 23, he’s certainly young enough, but his chin is something that I don’t see improving over time, even if his trainers can somehow fix poor conditioning.