By Jim Dower: On Saturday night, WBO light middleweight champion Alfredo Angulo (17-1, 14 KO’s) wants to continue with his recent bit of success by hopefully stopping Joel Julio (35-3, 31 KO’s) as quick as possible when they meet at the Citizens Business Bank Arena, in Ontario, California. Angulo, 27, has won two consecutive fights since being beaten by Kermit Cintron by a 12 round decision loss last year in May.

Angulo reportedly wasn’t feeling at his best before the Cintron fight and looked like it, appearing slow and getting beaten to the punch all night long. Angulo has turned things around since then, winning the World Boxing Organization interim light middleweight title in his last fight, a 3rd round TKO win over Harry Joe Yorgey in November. In an article at Yahoo Sports, Angulo says “I’m going to go out and take his head off and I think he’s going to try to do the same thing to me.”

Angulo has looked much better in his last two fights compared to the Cintron fight, and one has to wonder whether the loss to Cintron was just a fluke thing. We won’t know for sure until Angulo meets up with Cintron again or at the minimum a fighter that has the equivalent skills. Julio doesn’t have the same boxing skills that Cinron does, but he does have perhaps equal power.

Punching is the one that thing Julio does do well, when he’s fighting hard and throwing a lot of shots. However, Julio has looked lethargic in defeats to James Kirkland and Sergiy Dzinziruk. He appears to have stamina problems. In the Kirland fight, Julio held back a lot and seemed to be conserving his strength for some reason. He ended up getting stopped in the 6th round by Kirland. In hindsight, Julio would have been better off going for broke in that fight and giving it his all to try and get a stoppage win. At least he would have had a small chance of winning the bout by letting his power shots go instead of fighting passively through much of it.

On paper, this Saturday fight between Angulo and Julio looks to be an exciting affair with two sluggers going toe-to-toe for 12 rounds, wining big shots. I’m not so sure about that, though. If the same Julio comes into this fight that lost to Kirkland and Dzinziruk, then I expect for Angulo to win this fight by default. Julio has to fight really hard if he wants to beat Angulo because the Mexican fighter will be all over him from the opening bell and not giving him any rest breaks. It will be pure pressure from Angulo 100% of the time. If Julio can move for 12 rounds, he could survive like Cintron.

But Julio doesn’t move well and tires out quickly. He’ll be better off if he tries to match Angulo shot for shot and possibly hurting him and getting him out of there with one big punch. Julio, 25, is younger than the 27-year-old Angulo and should in theory be able to fight a little harder without running out of gas. Julio just has to get out of the way of Angulo’s big right hands and time him so that he can connect with some big counter shots that might put Angulo down.