By Manuel Perez: Undefeated welterweight prospect Danny Garcia (6-0, 5 KOs) pitched a six-round shut out on Saturday night, beating Nicaraguan fighter Julio Gamboa (28-13-2. 17 KOs) by a lopsided 6-round unanimous decision on the undercard of the Oscar De La Hoya vs. Steve Forbes bout at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California. Garcia, only 20, landed at will with very heavy shots for all six rounds, eventually knocking Gamboa down at the bell with a big right hand. However, Gamboa made it up and the fight ended there as time ran out in the fight. Despite easily winning the fight, the knockout artist Garcia seemed frustrated that he couldn’t stop the strong-chinned Gamboa despite putting everything he had in trying to get Gamboa out of there.
At the start of the fight in the 1st round, Garcia was all over Gamboa, hitting him with huge shots in a lightning fast fashion. Most fighters, perhaps even a champion or two, might have gone down from the heavy shots that Garcia was throwing in the opening round, but not Gamboa, who took the punches without showing any signs of being hurt. Throwing mostly one shot at a time, Garcia tagged Gamboa repeatedly with devastating shots that had the crowd roaring approval as they seemed to be under the impression that Gamboa would soon fall under the weight of Garcia’s huge shots.
However, Gamboa took everything that Garcia had in the round and yet he still coming forward. For his part, Gamboa only landed a few shots of his own, but that was mainly because he wasn’t really attempting to throw much back at Garcia. If he had, Gamboa would have had an easy time hitting Garcia, for his defense was just plain awful.
Garcia kept his left hand low most of the time, inviting shots. Unlike some fights, namely the good ones, Garcia wasn’t very adept at raising his lead hand in time to block shots. As such, he was hit pretty much every time that Gamboa had the inclination to throw a punch. Lucky for Garcia it wasn’t all that often, because he didn’t impress with his porous defense.
Garcia continued to land very heavy shots in the 2nd round, hitting with big right hand repeatedly. At one point in the round, Garcia caught Gamboa with a hard right hand as he was attempting to land one of his own shots, which hurt Gamboa for an instant. Gamboa quickly shook it off and continued fighting as before. As in the first round, Gamboa only threw a handful of punches, though he landed every time he let his hands go.
By the third round, Gamboa was already showing signs of swelling under both eyes from the heavy punches he was absorbing from Garcia. Gamboa only attempted three punches during the entire round, spending most of the time taking shots from Garcia. He seemed to be nothing but a punching bag for Garcia, who landed some tremendous shots without so much as blink from Gamboa.
Gamboa was cut under his right eye in the 4th round, a problem that would cause Gamboa to bleed all over the place for the next two rounds of the fight. Again, this was another huge round for Garcia, as he landed a high number of big shots, mostly right hands to the head of Gamboa. Still, Gamboa wasn’t going anywhere and still stood up to him without showing signs of being hurt in the least.
In the 5th round, Garcia began to look visibly frustrated, angry with himself for not being able to take Gamboa out. Part of the problem was that Garcia had become very predictable, in that he was throwing mostly right hands and using few combinations. His power was quite good, perhaps approaching that of Kermit Cintron, the former IBF welterweight champion, but the lack of combinations from Garcia made it easy to predict what he’d do next. Gamboa’s right eye continued to bleed in the round and by the close of the round it had gotten much worse, bleeding all over him and Garcia.
In the 6th round, Gamboa let his hands go somewhat, hitting Garcia with several good shots. However, Garcia came back strong in the last thirty seconds, hitting him with a blizzard of punches, and knocking him down with a right at the bell. Gamboa immediately sprung to his feet and showed that he was alright. The fight ended right there with time running out. Gamboa was confused for several moments, looking as if he were under the impression that the fight had been stopped by the referee due to the knockdown rather the time simply running out.
Overall, it wasn’t a very impressive performance by Garcia. Despite his big power, his defense is nonexistent and he looks somewhat small for a welterweight. He’ll have major problems when he steps it up against a top 10 welterweight and I can’t see him beating any of them unless he can get lucky and stop them. His boxing skills are poor and that’s another area that will be a problem for him. A fighter like Antonio Margarito, Miguel Cotto or even Kermit Cintron, would make easy work of this kid. He really needs to consider losing a little weight and moving down to light welterweight. At that weight class I can see him dominating, maybe even winning a championship, but not at welterweight.