By Scott Gilfoid: Looking both talented and very raw as a fighter, Yuriorkis Gamboa (12-0, 10 KOs) once again survived a scare when he was forced to get up off the canvas after being knocked down by previously unbeaten Marcos Ramirez (25-1, 16 KOs) in the first round on Saturday night at the Pechanga Resort & Casino, in Temecula, California. Gamboa, however, fought back hard and ended up knocking Ramirez out in the 2nd round of the scheduled 10-round bout. Gamboa, 26, a former 2004 Olympic Gold medalist for the Cuban National team, dropped Ramirez twice in the 2nd round.

The fight was stopped after the second knockdown when the referee Jerry Cantu, who was giving Ramirez the count after he was knocked down for the 2nd time in the round, suddenly increased the speed of the count when he reached eight, saying nine, ten really fast. It’s hard to say whether or not Ramirez, 27, would have been able to get up in time to beat the count or whether he could have survived the round, but at this point we’ll never get a chance to find out because of the quick count. It was unusual to say the least to see Gamboa fighting someone with hands about as fast as his own, and I think that was a big problem for him early in the first round as Ramirez was hitting him with fast jabs and left hooks.

In fact, at one point in the round, Ramirez nailed Gamboa with two successive left hooks and the Cuban star looked uneasy after getting hit, as if he didn’t know what hit him due to rapid fire of the punches. Instead of treading lightly with Ramirez, who was clearly hyped up and arguably in the fight of his life, Gamboa tried to steam roll over him like Gamboa does with most of his opponents. This allowed Ramirez to tag him with a perfect right-left combination, hurting him and then sending him to the canvas with a right elbow.

Showing his inexperience, Gamboa got up off the canvas and immediately attacked Ramirez rather than trying to let his own head clear after the knockdown. Lucky for Gamboa, he didn’t get hit with any additional big shots from Ramirez in the round, because this was how many fighters – both good and bad – end up getting knocked out, by trying to trade shots after being hurt. In Gamboa’s case, he was able to hit Ramirez with a series of left hand bombs and looked to have even stunned him slightly just before the round ended.

In the second round, both Ramirez and Gamboa stood at close range trading big shots. However, Gamboa landed a powerful right uppercut that hurt Ramirez followed by a cuffing right to the back of his head that dropped him to the canvas. After Ramirez got up, he was met with a storm of shots from Gamboa, who nailed him with a right, a big left followed by three consecutive right hands, the last being a powerful uppercut that sent a hurt Ramirez down.

Ramirez looked bad, alright, his nose was bleeding, but he was watching the referee intently as he was counting and looked poised to get up at eight, but the referee suddenly sped up the pace of his count at eight, giving him no time to rise from the canvas.

Apart from the count issue, Gamboa showed himself once again as being vulnerable to getting hurt by an opponent. He was previously dropped in the 4th round two fights ago by Darling Jimenez, and struggled to defeat him by a decision. This issue will no doubt likely show up again at some point in the future, as Gamboa fights in too much of reckless manner, and with the way he fights, sooner or later he’s going to run into something big and get put down again, and possibly knocked out.

He’s lucky right now to be fighting in the featherweight division where there’s few big punchers, because if he were to move up to the super featherweight, where he previously fought before moving down recently, he would have to mix it up with hard punchers like Humberto Soto, who has more than enough power to put Gamboa down and keep him there once he has him on shaky ground.