By Dan Ambrose: Hoganphotos/ Golden Boy Promotions – At the recent Los Angeles press conference between contender Alfonso Gomez (23-4-2, 12 KO’s) and WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (37-0-1, 27 KO’s) to publicize their September 17th fight at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California, Gomez. 30, had a fun time singing a rap song when it came time for him to speak in front of the large crowd, gleefully taunting the 21-year-old Alvarez and sprinkling his language with ‘F-words’.
To his credit, Alvarez sat there without saying a word with a stoic look on his face and failing to show emotions of any kind. When it came time for Alvarez to speak, he said “I’m a man, not a clown. I’ll do my talking with my fists inside the ring.”
Gomez is ranked number #6 by the World Boxing Council and has a hard task in front of him to try and beat the powerful Alvarez. Gomez hasn’t fought anyone nearly as good as Alvarez other than Miguel Cotto, who blew Gomez away three years ago with a 5th round stoppage. Gomez had huge problems with Cotto’s body punching in that fight and couldn’t hang. Alvarez is just as good a body puncher and maybe even better. He likes to throw double and triple hooks to the body and does it with a ton of power. Gomez doesn’t have the kind of pop in his shots to keep Alvarez off of him. He’s going to have to use his legs to move away from Alvarez if he wants to last long in this fight.
In his last couple of fights, Gomez has been matched soft against Calvin Green and an old out of his weight class Jose Luis Castillo. Gomez stopped both fighters and looked decent against them, but not like any kind of world beater that he’s going to need to be to beat a guy like Alvarez.
For his part, Alvarez has been very impressive in his last two fights, dominating Matthew Hatton to capture the vacant WBC junior middleweight title in March and then making a very good fighter Ryan Rhodes look bad in stopping him in the 12th round in June. Alvarez showed a lot of maturity in both fights and looked like a fighter that had been at the top for many years rather than just a 6-year pro.
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