By Manuel Perez: With a ton of people crowing about how good the newly crowned World Boxing Organization super flyweight Marvin Sonsona (14-0, 12 KO’s) is, I thought this would be a good time for me to shed some light on my own thoughts about him after seeing his poor performance against Jose Lopez last Friday night at the Casino Rama, in Ontario, Canada.
First of all, Sonsona is a tall 5’7” super flyweight, who looks not unlike a skinny stork in appearance. He showed some good power in both his left and right hands, I give him that. His right hook is really good when he’s throwing it. With that said, Sonsona has no defense against a right hand, absolutely none whatsoever. Jose Lopez, 37, who Sonsona defeated by a close 12 round decision last Friday night, was tagging Sonsona almost every time he’d led loose with a right hand.
The 19-year-old Sonsona was stunned on a couple of occasions by the 37-year-old Lopez. And the thing of it is, this wasn’t the best of the super flyweight champions that Sonsona was facing, not even close to being the best. This was essentially a fighter that was tailor made for Sonsona to look good against. Not just Sonsona, but a lot of fighters in the super flyweight division.
Lopez (39-8-2, 32 KO’s) may not have been beaten in the past sight years going into this fight, but he hadn’t fought anyone that I consider to be talented during that time. He lost to Fernando Montiel by a 12 round decision eight years ago, and since then it’s been smooth sailing for Lopez because he hasn’t fought anyone. He won the vacant WBO super flyweight with a 12 round decision over Pramuansak Posuwan in March 2009.
I consider Posuwan to be a top 16 super flyweight, no better than that. As for Lopez, I have him ranked just ahead of Posuwan at the number #15 spot. Sonsona didn’t impress me at all, not one bit. He showed some power early on against Lopez, but started getting nailed almost immediately by right hands from Lopez. This led to Sonsona looking timid and afraid and going long periods between throwing punches.
By the 5th round, Sonsona began to look tired already. How can a 19-year-old get tired by the 5th round? Sonsona was hurt in the 3rd round from aright hand from Lopez, and retreated immediately like a scolded dog trying to get away from Lopez. In the 8th, Lopez took over the fight and pounded Sonsona from that round until the 11th, when the Canadian crowd started screaming and encouraging Sonsona to get back into the fight.
Sonsona looked well on his way to losing the fight against Lopez at that point. Sonsona, with the assistance of the crowd cheering him on, rallied and won the last two rounds by a narrow margin. But Sonsona was far from impressive. Every time he was hit with a low blow, Sonsona would play to the referee and act as if he was in total pain.
This eventually led to Lopez being docked not one but two points in the 8th round. It was really strange how the referee took two points off at the same time. I’ve never seen that before in boxing when it comes to low blows.
I guess the referee was keeping a mental tally of the low blows that Lopez had thrown and decided to take points off all at one. I wish the referee had done the same about Sonsona’s rabbit punches, because he threw at least two during the fight that I feel should have led to points being taken away from Sonsona. The first occurred in the 2nd round after Sonsona hurt Lopez with a looping right hand that stunned him.
Sonsona then landed two left hands as Lopez stumbled towards the ropes. At that point, Sonsona hooked his right arm around him and nailed him with a perfect left hand rabbit punch to the back of the head that knocked him down. The knockdown didn’t count, of course, because of the placement of the punch, but it was something that I think should have led to a point being taken away from Sonsona.
At the end of the 4th, Sonsona landed another rabbit shot with his left hand. I thought for certain that the referee would do the right thing and take points off, but he didn’t. He led Sonsona slide with the punch. Lopez, to his credit, took the punch and didn’t get hurt by it.
At the end of the fight, Sonsona had too much of a youth advantage over the old 37-year-old Lopez. However, the fight was still incredibly close if not for the point deductions taken from Lopez.
I see a lot of fighters much better than Sonsona in the super flyweight division, fighters like Vic Darchinyan, Jorge Arce, Alexander Munoz, Hugo Cazares, Rafael Concepcion, Roberto Vazquez, Dimitri Kirillov, Kohei Kono, Raul Martinez, Tomas Rojas, Lorenzo Parra, Devid Lookmahnak and Nonito Donaire, to name just a few.
The problem is see with Sonsona is that he has no defense, tires way too quickly, seems to have a questionable chin and looks timid when attacked. The last point seems crucial for me in estimating Sonsona’s future success. When he’s being attacked, Sonsona goes into shut down and does nothing for long stretches of time. The only time I saw Sonsona doing any real damage in the fight was when Lopez would stand there waiting for him to throw punches.
For me, I see Sonsona as being the flavor of the week for boxing fans with little knowledge of the sport. They saw a guy with a little bit of power against an old limited fighter (Lopez) that was made to order for him, and now they’re ready to crown Sonsona because he narrowly beat the old guy.
Instead of putting things into perspective, seeing that it was old fighter with limited height (Lopez is incredibly short at only 5’5”), boxing fans see Sonsona as some kind of super talent. Listen to me, Sonsona is going to have his backside handed to him when he eventually fights someone good like Cazares, Arce, Concepcion and the other aforementioned fighters. This isn’t about age, either.
Because when Sonsona gets older, he obviously won’t be fighting in the super flyweight division. I can see him eventually ending up as a featherweight or super featherweight before he’s through. And at that weight class, Sonsona will have serious problems against the big punchers. His power will be average in those weight classes and his chin will be just as weak.
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