By Scott Gilfoid: Celestino Caballero (34-2, 23 KO’s) moved up in weight to easily defeat Daud Cino Yordan (25-1, 19 KO’s) to win the World Boxing Association featherweight interim title on Saturday night at the BankAtlantic Center, in Sunrise, Florida. The final judges’ scores were 119-108, 119-108 and 120-107. Despite losing, Yordan showed good power and excellent hand speed. Where he blew it was by not throwing enough punches and by constantly smothering Caballero without being busy enough.

At 22, Yordan probably will be using his smothering style of fighting for the remainder of his career, but the guy needs to throw some punches. He’s not going to beat the better featherweights in the division by hugging them to death or staying on top of them and landing 10 to 20 punches per round, no matter how hard Yordan punches. He hits hard, but he’s no knockout artist, not by a long shot.

And that’s the way that Yordan was fighting Caballero. He was holding back and throwing punches sparingly. I thought Yordan landed the harder and cleaner landing shots in every round of the fight, but the guy just wasn’t throwing enough punches to save his life and all that ugly smothering and clinching was really off putting. I know a lot of boxing fans thought that Yordan would give Caballero a lot of problems due to his youth, speed, better power and smothering fighting style.

You would think that a shorter fighter like the 5’7” Yordan would be able to give the 5’11” Caballero a lot of problems if he stayed in close and didn’t allow Caballero to extend his long arms. Wrong. Caballero proved to be an excellent inside fighter and was pounding Yordan silly from round one with his short hooks to the body and uppercuts to the head. And when he did get Yordan on the outside, Caballero was jabbing nonstop, snapping Yordan’s head back again and again like a yo-yo.

In the 2nd round, Yordan tried to bum rush Caballero and succeeded in running into a short right hand from Caballero that knocked Yordan to the canvas. It was an amateurish move that would have worked against a less skilled fighter, but not a championship caliber fight like Caballero, who looked at Yordan as if to say, ‘Get that amateurish crap out of here.’ In that round, Caballero landed seven consecutive left hooks to the head of Yordan.

I’ve never seen anyone do that before. That was pretty incredible and sad at the same time. Yordan was a punching bag for the most part. Caballero continued pound the stuffing out of Yordan in rounds four though twelve, making him eat hooks, uppercuts and jabs and handling his occasional hard shot. In the 12th round, Yordan staggered Caballero briefly with a hard right hand. However, Caballero recovered immediately and was firing on Yordan for the rest of the round. This really wasn’t even interesting fight. Yordan wasn’t in Caballero’s class, and the way he fought, he’ll never be in his class unless Yordan shows a tremendous amount of improvement. It was like watching a sparring session for 12 rounds.