(Photo: Showtime) By Allan Fox: It probably wasn’t quite the type of fight that Robert Guerrero (30-1-1, 18 KO’s) was looking for in his 12 round unanimous decision victory over previously unbeaten Selcuk Aydin (23-1, 17 KO’s) tonight at the HP Pavilion, in San Jose, California. But Guerrero did win the WBC interim welterweight title, and he made a case for himself that he should be next for Floyd Mayweather Jr, the full WBC welterweight champion.
I don’t think it was a very good case that Guerrero made that he deserves Mayweather, but there Guerrero was calling Mayweather out after the fight, as if he won the fight by a lopsided decision. The scores were fairly wide with Guerrero winning by the judges’ scores of 117-111, 116-112 and 116-112. I had Guerrero winning by a couple of rounds, but it wasn’t really impressive work for him. He landed more shots, 254 to 189 for Aydin, but those punches were a lot weaker than the shots that Aydin was throwing, so you kind of have to throw out a lot of the numbers. The judges were no doubt influenced by the sheer number of shots that Guerrero threw in the fight, throwing 972 punches compared to the 528 for Aydin. However, the accuracy wasn’t there for Guerrero nor was the power.
Guerrero controlled most of the first half of the fight with his better work rate. However, Aydin started getting to Guerrero in the second half of the bout, weakening him with body shots that bent Guerrero in half at times and clubbing head shots that wore Guerrero down. In the last three rounds, Aydin really teed off on Guerrero, hurting him a number of times with hard shots. Guerrero did a good job of clinching and probably should have lost a point or two for what appeared to be excessive holding in the last couple of rounds. But it was in San Jose, his turf, and there’s no way he was going to get points taken away for holding.
The win gets Guerrero the WBC interim welterweight, but it doesn’t likely get him a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Manny Pacquiao. At this point, Guerrero just looks like a weak punching paper title holder at this point. In other words, another Paulie Malignaggi, but not as slick or quite as powerful.
Comments are closed.