By Dan Ambrose: Following his less than impressive 12 round decision win over Yoshihiro Kamegai (24-2-1, 21 KO’s) last Saturday night, former two division world champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero (32-2-1, 18 KO’s) is gunning for the big names in the sport such as Manny Pacquiao, Floyd Mayweather Jr and Danny Garcia for his next fight. However, the chances of Guerrero getting any of them to fight him next are pretty much zero right now. He can essentially forget about another fight against Mayweather ever taking place again.
Unlike last time, Guerrero won’t be able to take his way into a big money fight this time around. He’s going to need to fight the top fighters at 147, and hope that he’s got the talent to beat them. I don’t like Guerrero’s chances of beating any of the top guys. Even Devon Alexander would likely be too good for him.
Guerrero had his one chance last year, and he was badly schooled in a one-sided 12 round decision loss. Besides that, the pay-per-view numbers for the fight was underwhelming to say the least. The low PPV numbers for the Mayweather-Guerrero fight will likely prevent Guerrero from getting a chance at fighting Pacquiao in the future, because Bob Arum of Top Rank doesn’t need another fight with less than huge PPV numbers like the ones that he got last year when he made the disastrous decision to match Pacquiao against Brandon Rios.
You can make a good argument that Guerrero and Rios are essentially the same fighters in terms of fan base in the U.S, and there’s no upside in Arum matching Pacquiao against Guerrero if the fan interest isn’t there. To be sure, Arum can make that fight if he wants to, but he’s going to be singing the blues when and if the PPV numbers coming in around 500,000 like they did when he made the mistake of matching Pacquiao against Rios.
Guerrero is probably going to have to settle with trying to get fights against the likes of Shawn Porter, Amir Khan, Adrien Broner or Keith Thurman. Those are about the best that Guerrero can hope for in terms of big fights, unless he’s going to continue to be matched against fringe contenders in hopes that if he beats enough of these fighters that Mayweather or Pacquiao will want to fight him.
I don’t see that happening, which is why Guerrero shouldn’t waste his career fighting the fringe level guys anymore. He’s not good enough to blow them out, as he’s more of a light welterweight fighting against stronger guys at 147. Guerrero needs to fight Broner, Khan, Porter or Thurman and be happy that he’s getting those fights, because it could be far worse for him.
What’s kind of difficult to understand is how Guerrero after beating Kamegai in a fight that was a lot harder than expected is now thinking he’s entitled to a big money rematch against Mayweather or a fight against Pacquiao. If beating a guy like Kamegai was all it took for fighters to get a shot against the likes of Mayweather and Pacquiao, we’d likely have a line a mile long to get a crack at the Japanese fighter.
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