Angulo-Julio to slug it out this Saturday

By Boxing News - 04/20/2010 - Comments

Image: Angulo-Julio to slug it out this SaturdayBy Jim Dower: This Saturday night, two big sluggers WBO light middleweight champion Alfredo Angulo (17-1, 14 KO’s) faces Colombian Joel Julio (35-3, 31 KO’s) at the Citizens Business Bank Arena, in Ontario, California. The fight will be on the undercard of the heavyweight clash between Chris Arreola and Tomasz Adamek. Angulo, 27, is looking to pick up his third consecutive win since his disappointing 12 round decision defeat to Kermit Cintron last year in May. Julio, 25, badly needs this win to stay ranked in the top 15. Julio, once considered a future champion by some boxing experts, has lost two out of his last three fights.

However, both losses have come against excellent opposition, as Julio was beaten by Sergiy Dzinziruk and James Kirkland. There’s no shame in losing to either of those fighters, but never the less, Julio is still losing when facing top fighters. The one silver liming that Julio has going for him is his young age. He’s younger than most of the top tier fighters and still has time to improve or at the very least, wait out some of the older fighters at the top like Sergio Martinez.

Angulo has looked great since his loss to Cintron, and has rebounded with two impressive wins over the tough Gabriel Rosado and Harry Joe Yorgey, stopping both of them in the early rounds of the fight. Angulo doesn’t have the fastest hands, but he seems to make up for it with his nonstop punching style and his big power. He’s somewhat like a bigger, slightly slower, more powerful version of Antonio Margarito. Angulo’s lack of hand speed was exposed in his loss to Cintron, as Angulo had problems landing his big shots.

Another problem that Angulo has is his slow foot movement. He’s not very quick on his feet and has problems with fighters when they use movement. Angulo has to improve in this area if he wants to become the full WBO champion in the future. If Angulo faces Dzinziruk, the WBO champion, he’s going to have to deal with a lot of movement all night long from him. Dzinziruk likes to jab and move and is very tough on sluggers like Angulo.

This Saturday’s fight will be a test for Angulo to see how he does against a big puncher like himself. Julio punches very hard with both hands and is easily the biggest puncher that Angulo will have faced in his five year pro career. Angulo is going to have to hope that he can take Julio out early before he starts landing his own huge bombs.



Comments are closed.