By Eric Schmidt: Hard-hitting undefeated junior middleweight prospect Alfredo Angulo (11-0, 8 KOs) will put his unbeaten record on the line on Friday night when he takes on fellow prospect Mexican Ricardo Cortes (22-1, 150 KOs) in a scheduled 10-round bout at the Grand Casino, in Hinckley, Minnesota. Angulo, 25, a former Olympian on 2004 Mexican boxing team, is one of the best prospects in the junior middleweight division. With explosive power in either hand, Angulo has the potential to end a fight at any moment. Though he’s not particularly fast in terms of handspeed, his power seems to make up for his lack of speed, at last up to this point in his still young career.
In his most recent bout, a 1st round TKO of the tough junior middleweight Archak TerMeliksetian on November 30th, 2007, Angulo badly hurt TerMeliksetian with a big left hook, and then finished off with a flurries of shots to the head. It was especially impressive considering that TerMeliksetian is a tough competitor with a lot of power.
However, Angulo had no problem taking TerMeliksetian’s power shots early on, and quickly dispatched him with his hooks to the head. In selecting Cortes, another tough fighter with a lot of power, Angulo’s management team appear to be moving him along faster than most fighters are generally advanced in their career path. However, Angulo seems a very advanced fighter, looking both mature and polished for his youthful 25. His speed, or lack thereof, will perhaps be an issue for him in the future once he steps it up against the 1st tier junior middleweights.
But, with Angulo’s power, he may be able to compensate for his lack of speed by knocking out most of the better opponents he comes up against. In this battle, Cortes, 28, will be have an uphill climb in front of him, because he hasn’t been in there with any fighters even close to as good as Angulo, and it will likely be a shock for him when he starts taking Angulo’s tremendous shots. Cortes’ record, while impressive, is essentially built on fluff, fighters of little ability with which Cortes has, for the most part, easily beaten.
At this point, I’d rate Angulo a couple rungs above Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., another junior middleweight prospect, who has been getting a great deal of press due to his famous father, the legend Julio Cesar Chavez. Angulo looks like a much more solid fighter than Chavez, yet he is still largely unknown because of the lack of publicity about him. Hopefully, with a few more impressive wins, Angulo may start getting more press about him, because he definitely appears to have the goods at this point to be a top 10 junior middleweight. It’s unclear whether he’ll ever achieve champion status, since it’s still too early to tell, but with his power, it’s a clear possibility.