By Chris Williams: I went into Saturday’s super featherweight matchup between former featherweight champion Robert Guerrero (23-1-1, 16 KOs) and his opponent Indonesian Daud Cino Yordan (23-0, 17 KOs) thinking that Guerrero would easily win the fight due to his power, skill, home town advantage and experience. However, the fight turned out to be the exact opposite of what I thought it would be, as Yordan showed incredible speed, excellent power and looked to be the sharper puncher of the two up until the fight was stopped due to a cut over the right eye of Guerrero in the 2nd.
The cut was caused by a clash of heads in the 2nd round between Guerrero and Yordan. A short time later, with Guerrero constantly dabbing at the cut, the referee called a time out and had the ringside doctor look at the cut. During this time, Guerrero said that he was having problems seeing out of the eye due to the blood that was leaking into it.
The doctor then asked him, “you can’t see?” And Guerrero pointed out that he couldn’t. The fight was then stopped much to the displeasure of the many Guerrero fans that had flocked to San Jose to see him fight. However, it seemed odd that Guerrero didn’t allow the fight to last until the end of the round so that it could be worked on by his corner, because they might have been able to control much of the bleeding allowing him to fight on.
By having the fight stopped like this, at a time when Yordan appeared to be getting the better of Guerrero with hard combinations and blazing speed, it looked in appearances like Guerrero was looking for a way out of a bad situation.
To be sure, Guerrero was the aggressor in both rounds, but he wasn’t landing the cleaner shots nor with as much power seemingly as the young 21-year-old Yordan, who looked very fresh and strong, like he could fight for a full 12 rounds without tiring out. Maybe Guerrero realized that he would have been in deep trouble if he had to fight with a big cut against such a young and talented fighter like Yordan and decided it was better to opt on the side of safety by getting out of there as fast as he can without danger of getting beaten.
By the way things looked to be going, it appeared that Yordan was taking control over the fight and might have been able to cruise to a victory if it had been allowed to continue to the end. Guerrero chose a bad time to have the fight stopped because he should have at least given his corner a chance to stop the cut and if not, then let the doctor step in on his own and stop the fight rather than having it stopped so quickly.
The way things turned out, it put Guerrero in a bad light because of the direction the fight was heading at the time of the stoppage. Yordan, virtually an unknown fighter with little experience against top fighters until that night, had foiled Guerrero’s offense in the 1st and 2nd rounds by clinching him often after landing shots.
Late in the 1st, Yordan began lighting Guerrero up with shots. This continued into the 2nd, with Yordan landing well and then immediately clinching. Guerrero seemed to have no answers to this style of fighting and looked to be a little over his head. His trademark punches, his hooks to the body, had no effect on Yordan who easily took the shots or blocked them.
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