Who’s Next for Cintron?

By Jason Kim: Kermit Cintron (31-2-1, 27 KOs) pulled off a huge upset the other night when he defeated unbeaten light middleweight contender Alfredo Angulo (15-1, 12 KOs) last Saturday night in a 12-round unanimous decision victory. Cintron, 29, was thought by many boxing people to be past his prime after a loss to Antonio Margarito and a 12-round draw with Sergio Martinez recently.

Cintron used his jab and combinations to defeat the slower Angulo, who probably was a little too green to be fighting an opponent as good as Cintron at this point in Angulo’s career. Never the less, the win puts Cintron in a good position for fights against champions in both the welterweight and the light middleweight division.

Cintron, unlike most fighters, doesn’t tie himself down to any one division and is willing to move among different weight classes to fight the biggest fights available for him. It’s that lack of fear of losing that makes Cintron so good, because he seems to have learned a lot from his fights with Margarito and Martinez in the past year.

Cintron has gone from being a fighter that focuses mainly on slugging it out with his opponents to one that uses a combination of boxing and slugging. Against Angulo, Cintron spent large stretches of time jabbing alone and moving around the ring to keep out of the way of Angulo’s big punches.

The new style worked perfectly for Cintron, as he was able to foil many of Angulo’s hard attacks. Had Cintron not fought Margarito and Martinez in the past, I suspect that Angulo would have likely knocked Cintron out because Kermit might have made the mistake of trying to go toe to toe with Angulo instead of boxing him at a distance.

As for options for future opponents, Cintron could go for a rematch with Sergio Martinez, the WBC light middleweight champion. Cintron had problems with Martinez’s style, but he was able to knot up the score by landing the harder shots.

This is an interesting fight, but Cintron might be better of trying to seek out a fight with WBC welterweight champion Andre Berto instead or a fight with IBF light middleweight champion Cory Spinks, who is reportedly interested in a fight with Cintron.

An ideal opponent would be for someone like Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto, two welterweight champions. Both of them the big name value that Cintron would need to make for a good payday, and it would be a fight where Cintron would be able to use his power a little bit more than he did in his fight with Angulo.

Cotto would be dangerous, because of his big power and good boxing skills. Cintron would have to avoid at all costs trying to get into a war with Cotto like he did with Margarito, because Cotto has the power to take out his opponents in a real hurry.

With Mosley, it would be a different matter as he tends to batter his opponents over the course of a fight to get his knockouts rather than just tearing them apart like Cotto typically does. Cintron would have to use his jab and movement against the quicker Mosley, because this would be more of a tactical battle than a fight against Cotto.

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