By Dan Ambrose: Buoyed by his fighter Yuriokis Gamboa’s tougher than expected 12 round unanimous decision victory over Michael Farenas to claim the interim WBA World super featherweight title last Saturday night at the MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, Nevada, promoter 50 Cent [AKA Curtis Jackson] said he’d like to put together a fight between the 30-year-old Gamboa and the 23-year-old WBC lightweight champion Adrien Broner (25-0, 21 KO’s) in 2013.
50 Cent said at the Pacquiao-Marquez 4 press conference “We’re looking forward to moving up and fighting some more exciting fighters in the 135 weight class, like Adrien Broner. We’re all a big fan of the new talent that’s emerging, so I won’t be shy to say that I’m a fan of Adrien Broner.”
That would be another move up in class for Gamboa (22-0, 16 KO’s), who moved up in weight from featherweight to super featherweight in the Farenas fight, and while Gamboa won the fight by the scores of 117-109, 118-108 and 117-108, he wasn’t all that impressive. He looked like a weak-chinned, top heavy arm puncher with a tendency not to fight hard for the full three minutes of every round.
Gamboa took a lot of hard shots in that fight, and was knocked down by Farenas in the 9th round when he was hit hard by a left hook from Farenas. Asking Gamboa to move up in weight again to fight a guy like Broner would be really asking a lot of the 5’5” Gamboa. He looked pretty maxed out in terms of size against Farenas and if he moves up another division to 135, Gamboa is going to be too slow to compete with the heavy handed Broner.
Gamboa doesn’t have the frame to be fighting Broner, who tends to rehydrate up close to 150. Gamboa would be giving away a lot of weight against Broner, and I can only imagine what would happen to Gamboa when Broner starts connecting with his big shots.
If you thought Gamboa had problems last Saturday night with the heavy shots that the slow Farenas was hitting him just imagine what it’ll be like with an ever bigger puncher with better hand speed like Broner was tagging Gamboa all night.
I don’t see this fight happening. Gamboa needs to fight at least two or three more times at super featherweight before he starts thinking of moving to lightweight and Broner may not be in the lightweight division by then because he’s thinking of moving up to 140. If you Gamboa at 140, it’s going to be a joke. You can’t have a 5’5” light welterweight because he’d be far too small for the division. Gamboa would be just another Jose Miguel Cotto.
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