By Dan Ambrose: 38-year-old former IBF/WBA/WBO welterweight champion Antonio “The Tijuana Tornado” Margarito (39-8, 27 KOs) will be making his second fight of his comeback next month on August 13 against #13 WBC junior middleweight contender Ramon “Inocente” Alvarez (23-4-2, 15 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Centro de Convenciones in Rosarito, Baja California.
Alvarez, 29, is one of the brothers of Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Ramon hasn’t enjoyed the same kind of success as his younger brother Canelo unfortunately. But interestingly enough, Ramon is ranked in the top 15 in the World Boxing Council’s rankings and Canelo is not after he chose to vacate his WBC middleweight title recently rather than share the ring with his mandatory challenger Gennady “GGG” Golovkin.
This could be a very tough fight for Margarito, because he looked really shaky in his last fight against Jorge Paez Jr. (39-8-2, 23 KOs) last March. Margarito won the fight by a 10 round unanimous decision, but the contest was closer than the scores handed down. The judges scored it 95-94, 96-93 and 97-93. Paez Jr., who is hardly a big puncher, knocked Margarito down in the 6th round. It wasn’t just a flash knockdown like we sometimes in the sport.
Margarito was legitimately hurt and there to be knocked out if the 28-year-old Paez Jr. had any finishing ability. You can give the 5’11” Margarito a slight break in having such a tough time against Paez Jr., given that this was his first fight in close to five years since his 9th round stoppage loss to Miguel Cotto in their rematch on December 3, 2011.
Still, it’s not a good thing that Margarito is getting dropped by weak punchers like Paez Jr. Margarito has never been particularly fast of hand or feet, but he looked very slow in this fight. The time away from the sport hasn’t improved Margarito’s hand speed any or made him a better fighter.
Margarito would need to find the fountain of youth for him to be able to compete with the top junior middleweights in the division like Erislandy Lara, the Charlo brothers, Julian Williams or Demetrius Andrade. Margarito says he wants to fight Canelo and Miguel Cotto, but I don’t think either of those fights is going to happen. I think Margarito has an outside chance of getting a third fight against Cotto if he fights more frequently, wins all of his fights, and gets at least two or three good scalps from the 154lb division.
I don’t think Cotto is going to be too impressed with Margarito if he defeats Ramon Alvarez, because he’s little more than a fringe contender in the junior middleweight division. If Ramon were put in with the really talented fighters in the division like the Charlo brothers and Lara, I think he would be knocked out and badly clowned.
Ramon just doesn’t have the punching power or the talent that his younger brother Canelo has going for him. There’s no shame in Ramon not being able to beat those high quality fighters, because I don’t think Canelo can beat them either.
Canelo’s 12 round split decision win over Lara in 2014 was HIGHLY controversial with many fans seeing Canelo as the loser in the fight. The fact that Canelo only landed 31 head shots in the entire 12 round fight gives you a pretty good indication of how badly he was struggling against Lara.
“It will just Ramon and I fighting in the ring,” said Margarito to fightnews.com. “Nobody else will help him or me.”
It doesn’t matter that Canelo won’t be inside the ring to help Ramon. Margarito is going to be vulnerable to Ramon just based on him being an older fighter now. He’s fighting a much younger guy, albeit a fighter that never possessed the kind of talent that Margarito showed in his prime. What made Margarito so good when he was younger was his ability to throw over 100 punches per round. Few welterweights were able to handle that kind of punch volume without coming apart at the seams.
Ramon has won eight out of his last nine fights since losing a one-sided 12 round decision to Mario Alberto Lozano in October 2012. Ramon hasn’t beaten anyone that you can call a good fighter. Ramon’s best wins in the last four years have come against Omar Chavez, Vivian Harris, Richard Gutierrez, and Ben Tackie. Margarito has losses to Jesus Aceves, Daniel Sandoval, and Agustin Marquez.