Gamboa going back down to super featherweight

By Boxing News - 07/01/2014 - Comments

gamboa54433333By Dan Ambrose: Following his 9th round knockout loss to the 152 pound WBO lightweight champion Terence Crawford (24-0, 17 KOs) last Saturday night, former IBF/WBA featherweight champion Yuriorkis Gamboa (23-1, 16 KO’s) plans on moving back down to super featherweight to try and get fights against Juan Manuel Lopez and Mikey Garcia if possible.

Those are the two biggest names at 130 by far in the division, and the only logical fights for Gamboa to try and get made. He doesn’t plan on going back down to 126 [featherweight] where he was previously at his best, although he probably should because the featherweight division is now far more stacked with talent than the empty super featherweight division.

“In the fight with Crawford at first everything was fine,” said Tony Gonzalez, Gamboa’s adviser to ESPN Deportes. “But in the end I think the big disadvantage [in size] took a toll. The best option now is to go back to 130 pounds. Yuriorkis wanted to test the waters at 135 pounds to see where he stood. But obviously he’s stronger at 130. I think he did well in the first four or five rounds but lost the fight. But then he abandoned his plan and made it into a street fight.”

It’s a smart move for Gamboa to move down to super featherweight, because it’s not worth it for him to be staying at lightweight and fighting guys that arguably belong in the welterweight division like Terence Crawford. When you have a fighter melting down from 152 to fight in the lightweight division, then it puts smaller, more natural lightweights at a huge disadvantage in weight.

This obviously would be taken care of if they had same day weigh-ins a couple of hours before the actual fights to keep fighters from gaining back tons of weight to fight against smaller fighters, but until the sanctioning bodies make changes to how the weigh-ins are conducted, you’ll continue to see guys fighting 2-3 divisions outside of their own weight class. 152 is junior middleweight, which is three divisions above lightweight.

Gamboa is going to need to keep his cool when he gets knocked down in the future in fights, because he made a big mistake when he abandoned his game plan in the 5th after getting knocked down by Crawford. Gamboa was doing a great job in the first 4 rounds in fighting in an in an out manner. But after he got knocked down, he changed his game plan and started slugging with Crawford. Things might have worked out for Gamboa even then had he been fighting someone in their 130s or low 140s, but in fighting a guy weighing 152, there was no way that Gamboa was going to be able to knock him out, especially when he was giving up nearly a half foot in reach.



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