By William MacKay: For those boxing fans who didn’t see Cuban featherweight Yuriorkis Gamboa (11-0, 9 KOs) take out Al Seeger in the 1st round on Friday night, they missed out on an impressive performance from the young Cuban star, who at this point looks almost destined to be a champion in the featherweight division. Though he was no less impressive while fighting as a featherweight, there was some question as to whether Gamboa was seasoned enough to beat a top super featherweight like Edwin Valero, Humberto Soto or Juan Manuel Marquez.
Any of those fighters, in particular Soto, would have been a very tough fight for Gamboa given their size and power advantage they would have over the smaller Gamboa. With Gamboa’s recent move down to the featherweight division, he effectively removes all of the bigger threats to him from the face of the map, leaving him as perhaps the best fighter in the division. Of course, I’m sure featherweights Jorge Linares, Chris John and Steven Luevano might have something to say about that.
However, none of those fighters come even close to having the same speed, power or aggression as Gamboa does, and would be hard pressed to beat him if and when they every fight him. Of the bunch, Linares, a smooth fighter with excellent boxing skills, would possibly have the best shot at beating Gamboa.
However, Linares is more of a methodical fighter, not particularly fast or overly power, and who tends on breaking down his opponents over the course of a bout rather than in one or two brutal rounds like Gamboa typically does. This would probably but Linares at a big disadvantage if matched against a young, all out fighter like Gamboa, because he would be forced to fight hard at the very start of the fight, and wouldn’t have the time to using his boxing skills or use his excellent body attack, because he’d be too busy trying to protect himself from Gamboa’s ferocious attacks.
This would be a fight where Linares would have to be on the defense throughout, for if he tried to open up with any of his own shots, he’d very likely end up catching something big like Seeger did on Friday night from Gamboa and get knocked out early. Chris John, the WBA featherweight champion, is mostly a defensive counter-puncher and would likely be an even easier fighter for Gamboa to beat. John (41-0-1, 22 KOs) doesn’t have much power to speak of and has faced mostly limited competition aside from several good fighters like Juan Manuel Marquez, Jose Rojas and Derrick Gainer.
In the case of Marquez, by some accounts, John was given a gift decision over him. Whatever the case, he would have probably have tremendous problems trying to keep Gamboa on the outside where he’s more comfortable. I doubt that John would have the power to keep Gamboa on the outside for more than a few seconds, before he rushes in and tags him with something really big and likely takes him out in a round or two. Even if this fight were in John’s native Indonesia, where he usually likes to fight, Gamboa would remove the judges completely from the outcome by taking John’s head off in a round or two, crowd or no crowd.
Luevano, the WBO featherweight champion, would probably be the easiest of the bunch for Gamboa to take out. The reason is Luevano appears to have a big sense of pride working for him – or in this case, working against him – causing him to want to slug it out whenever he’s hit by a big shot from one of his opponents. For example, in his last fight against Mario Santiago, Luevano was hit and hurt on a couple of occasions during the bout by the more powerful Santiago, and instead of making adjustments and using his boxing skills to defeat Santiago, he went right back at him with power shots of his own and ultimately turned a winnable fight for him to a disappointing 12-round draw.
Luevano would likely do the same if matched against Gamboa, immediately trying to pay him back if hit hard by him. This would make Luevano very vulnerable for Gamboa’s bigger, much quicker shots, and he’d likely have an easy time taking him out in a round, possibly two. I doubt it would go much longer than the Seeger fight, though, because Luevano fights far too much with anger rather than using his head and thinking things out clearly before he acts.
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