By David Lar: A fighter to keep an eye on in the near future in the middleweight division is undefeated Fernando Guerrero (10-0, 9 KOs) who pounded out an impressive eight-round unanimous decision last night against Tyrone Watson (7-1, 3 KOs) at the Wicomico Civic Center, in Salisbury, Maryland. Guerrero, 21, a former 2007 U.S amateur middleweight champion, showed good skills – a high work rate, sharp combinations and a good endurance in dominating the previously unbeaten Watson. Fighting in front of a large home crowd, Guerrero went after a badly over-matched Watson from the get go, hitting him nonstop to the body and head, trying desperately to take him out.
However, Watson, 28, showed an excellent chin and took all the punishment that Guerrero could dish out, and even returned fire on rare occasions when Guerrero would leave himself open defensively. The final judges’ scores were 80-72, 80-72 and 80-71. Guerrero, a southpaw, came after Watson hard in the first round, following hi around and landing mostly one punch at a time to the body and head. He mixed up his punches well in the round, but seemed to lack power on his shots. To this, he seemed to try and compensate by throwing more punches in an effort to get Watson out of there. Watson, though, did a good job covering up, blocking many of the shots, and the ones that got through didn’t seem to bother him much because of Guerrero’s marginal power.
Guerrero began opening up more with power shots in the 2nd round, having an easy time with Watson because he wasn’t throwing anything back at him. Without Watson trying to mount any offense of his own, it left Guerrero free to tee-off on him with pretty much anything he wanted to. Things like good form, defense and thoughts of protecting oneself, seemed to go out the window as Guerrero went after Watson with both hands blazing. It was a good thing for Guerrero that he was fighting an opponent that wasn’t throwing anything back, because he looked very vulnerable to getting hit. In fact, Watson, when he would throw punches, landed cleanly every time to the head or body, because of Guerrero porous defense.
The hammering continued in rounds three through five. The fifth round was especially brutal, as Guerrero, urged on by his loud home crowd screaming with every punch he landed, went all throwing a storm of punches while Watson covered up on the ropes. A lot of referees probably would have stopped the fight in this round, because Watson wasn’t throwing anything back and was getting hit an awful lot. However, in this case, I think the referee saw how weak Guerrero’s punches were and figured that Watson was okay with taking them. He blocked a lot of them, but because of the sheer volume of punches thrown many of them got through.
Yet he wasn’t hurt for an instant, nor did his skin puff up or tear with all the shots he was getting hit with. In rounds seven and eight, Guerrero continued pouring it on looking for a knockout, but Watson wasn’t having none of it, refusing to go down and taking Guerrero’s best shots without any problems whatsoever. In the end, the victory for Guerrero was probably a little bitter sweet, because it seemed to highlight his problems with his lack of power and poor defense. While I can see him improving in the way of defense over time, I doubt that he’ll gain much if anything in the way of power.
Comments are closed.