By Dave Lahr: The Kermit Cintron vs. Alfredo Angulo fight is only three days away, but the fight seems to be barely mentioned on the various boxing sites on the net for some reason. I’m wondering why the lack of interest in this fight. I mean you’ve got two excellent knockout punchers with incredible both of them and poor defenses to block shots. Cintron, 29, is kind of in a do or die situation with his career at this point.
Cintron was knocked out last year by Antonio Margarito, Kermit’s second knockout loss to Margarito during his career. Cintron lost his IBF welterweight title in that fight which couldn’t have made him feel too happy I would venture to guess.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Cintron was nearly knocked out in his fight with the light-hitting Sergio Martinez in his last fight in February for the Interim World Boxing Council light middleweight title. The fight ended up being ruled as a majority draw, but most boxing observers feel that Cintron should have been knocked out in the fight after getting dropped and then arguing that it wasn’t a knockdown.
Even without the missed knockout call, Cintron should have still lost the fight, because he was getting dominated for most of the rounds. The referee gave Cintron another break in the 12th when he deducted a point from Martinez for throwing a punch to the back of Cintron’s head as he was ducking down.
It was a bad call, because Cintron was the one that was ducking down and it’s hard not to hit the back of an opponent’s head when they duck down in front of you. There had been no prior warning before the point was taken away from Martinez.
Cintron gets out of the fight without taking another loss, but it didn’t help Cintron win over any boxing fans that saw the fight and thought that Martinez was robbed of a victory. I think the fight hurt Cintron in a big way, as he had already been knocked out by Margarito last year, and then to be saved from getting knocked out seemed to make Cintron look very vulnerable as a fighter.
That’s something isn’t a good thing if you want to attract fans to a fight. For his part, Angulo still hasn’t performed well enough to win over a lot of boxing fans in the same way that light middleweight knockout artist James Kirkland was prior to his legal issues that popped up recently.
Angulo may be knocking out his opponents by wearing them down with heavy pressure and clubbing shots, but he’s so god awful slow with his punches and is so hittable, that it takes away from his performances. Angulo is kind of like a bigger, less exciting version of Ricky Hatton.
Angulo likes to come right at his opponents and tries to overwhelm them with shots. He’s not a one-punch knockout artist as it takes him a lot longer to score his knockouts due to his slower hand speed.