By Dave Lahr: Former WBC lightweight champion Jose Luis Castillo (56-9-1, 48 KOs), now fighting as a welterweight, will face James Wayka (16-7, 8 KOs) on January 17th in a scheduled 10-round bout at the Palenque del FEX, in Mexicali, Baja California, Mexico. Castillo, 35, seems ill-suited for the welterweight division, both too small at 5’8″ and far too weak to compete against the larger more powerful welterweights in the division.
It’s unclear why Castillo wishes to continue fighting as a welterweight, because he looked terrible in his last fight, losing a one-sided 10-round unanimous decision to puncher Sebastian Lujan in July. If anything, Castillo needs to lose twelve pounds and move back down to the lightweight division where he at one time was one of the best fighters in the division.
Making that weight, unfortunately, probably isn’t something that Castillo can do safely anymore, but it’s better fighting at that weight than getting pounded by the larger welterweights. With that said, Castillo should make easy work of Wayka on the 17th, but whether he does or not, it will prove little.
Wayka is C-class fighter and not the kind of opponent that Castillo at his age needs in order to keep progressing. I suppose if he’s matched up with enough of these kinds of opponents, eventually Castillo might get moved up high enough in the welterweight division for one of the champions to want to fight him, probably only for his name recognition value.
But even if that does happen, I would give Castillo no chance at beating any of the existing welterweight champions nor anyone in the top 15, for that matter. Castillo looked old and past it in his last fight against Lujan. At best, I’d place Lujan in the top 40 in the welterweight division, but no higher than that, yet Castillo made him look like a champion, getting beaten to a pulp.
Lujan jumped all over Castillo in the first round, throwing a massive amount of shots and just overwhelming Castillo with punches. For the next nine rounds, Lujan, who trains with Antonio Margarito, never stopped punching, averaging over a 100 punches thrown per round and hitting Castillo with at least half of them.
If Castillo thought that Lujan would soon wear himself out and slow down, he was sadly mistaken, because Lujan continued throwing ton of punches, albeit with a lot less power, all the way until the end of the fight in the 10th. It was particularly sad to see Lujan, who will probably never be ranked in the top 10 in the remaining years of his career, and doubtfully will ever win a championship, taunting Castillo in the later rounds of the fight.
Castillo will probably easily beat Wayka, but the win won’t answer questions about how much Castillo has left. Two fights earlier, Castillo had been stopped by a body punch from Ricky Hatton in 2007, proving himself too small to compete against the bigger light welterweight Hatton.
For Castillo to be competing at even a higher weight at his late stage of his career seems like a move doomed for failure. If he’s doing it for the love of boxing, that’s one thing, but if he still has designs of fighting for a title someday, I think Castillo would be better off retiring because he doesn’t appear to have the physical tools to compete at that weight class.
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