Daud Yordan – a Younger Version of Pacquiao?

By Boxing News - 03/09/2009 - Comments

yordan4534By Chris Williams: Perhaps the only fighter to come out shining from this Saturday’s bout in San Jose, California, was the undefeated Daud Yordan (23-0, 17 KOs), who gave super featherweight Robert Guerrero (23-1-1, 16 KOs) all he could handle until a cut above Guerrero’s right eye caused the early stoppage of the fight. The bout was stopped by the ringside doctor after a brief conversation with Guerrero at the side of the ring during which time the referee asked Guerrero if he wanted to continue.

Guerrero didn’t want to and the fight was stopped at that point. For two rounds, Guerrero had been ineffective against the 21-year-old Yordan from Indonesia. All the things that Guerrero usually does to dominate – body shots and hooks to the head – had no effect on Yordan, who fired back even faster shots and tied up Guerrero afterwards.

It was like watching a replay of the Shane Mosley’s masterful performance over the slower Antonio Margarito in January, in which Mosley would throw fast combinations and then immediately tie up Margarito to prevent him from getting his punches off.

In this case, though, Yordan looked so younger and stronger than Guerrero, and had no problems with his shots even when Guerrero was landing. Perhaps because Guerrero has become used to scoring quick knockouts over relatively soft opposition in the past couple of years, he seemed out of his element against the slick, fast and powerful Yordan and looked very uncomfortable throughout.

The two fighters clinched often, mostly with Yordan doing to clinching. It wasn’t excessive clinching and seemed to be used more of a tactic to keep Guerrero from answering back. Yet even when Guerrero was throwing, he’d dive in head first with sloppy punches missing most of the time.

I saw that there was going to be a problem with a potential head butt early on with Guerrero charging forward head first so often. It seemed like a problem waiting to happen. As far as the punching goes, Yordan landed the far harder and cleaner shots and did well in both rounds.

In the 2nd, Yordan seemed to be getting comfortable and was landing with much more power at the time that the fight was stopped due to the cut. With the way the fight was progressing, it would have taken something special from Guerrero for him to rebound from the cut and come up with a strategy to defeat Yordan’s better power and speed.

Clearly, what Guerrero had used throughout his career – body attack mixed with hooks and uppercuts to the head – wasn’t going to be effective against Yordan, who had no problem blocking or ducking the shots. Guerrero’s power shots had no effect on Yordan, who was able to take the shots without even looking in the least bothered by them.

You couldn’t say the same for Guerrero, who looked troubled with the power shots he was getting hit with from Yordan, especially in the 2nd when Yordan began putting much more power into his shots. He looked like a younger version of Manny Pacquiao, only with more ability to fight on the inside than Pacquiao. After tasting Yordan’s power in the first two rounds, Guerrero looked like he wasn’t too interested in the prospects of fighting him for another eight rounds with a cut eye.

It would have taken something special for Guerrero to deal with Yordan’s superior talent and I can’t see what he would have done to make things different. The cut wasn’t that bad and I’ve seen far worse, which is strange why Guerrero decided to stop fighting when he did. He had thousands of boxing fans come from nearby Gilroy to see him fight, yet he still opted to quit because of the cut and not fight on and give them a chance to get their monies worth.

Obviously, a rematch is in order for Yordan and Guerrero, but I’m not sure HBO will want to take another chance on Guerrero after this. He may have messed up his future chances to be shown on HBO by not fighting onward.



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