By Scott Gilfoid: Fighting for the first time since flying out of the ring 14 months again in a loss to Paul Williams, former International boxing Federation (IBF) welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (32-4-1, 28 KO’s) was really taken to school by Carlos Molina (19-4-2, 6 KO’s) in a 10n round unanimous decision loss at the Home Depot Center, in Carson, California.

The judges’ scored it 98-92, 98-92 and 98-92 for Molina. I like those scores. Cintron didn’t have a clue what to do in this fight. Forget about him being rusty from in activity. Cintron was in with a better fighter who threw more punches and who knew how to work on the inside.

Molina would have beaten Cintron at any point in his career, because he’s superior in every part of his game except for the power. And even in the power department, Molina isn’t that much weaker than Cintron. His punches were almost as hard, which made me wonder who has Cintron been knocking out all these years? I don’t see a lot of quality fighters among the guys that Cintron stopped in the past. I think his power is vastly overrated and Molina proved that by easily taking his pot shots.

What this fight came down to was Molina simply throwing more punches than Cintron and outworking him on the inside and the outside. Molina was especially good on the inside where he landed combinations while Cintron would attempt to clinch. Each time they would be separated, Cintron would throw one punch at a time and he usually miss with his looping shots. In contrast, Molina would come straight down the middle with right hands and hard jabs. He was keeping his shots straight to beat Cintron to the punch and doing a heck of a job at it.

This loss has got to hurt Cintron, because his promoter Bob Arum had been talking about him being one of Manny Pacquiao’s possible opponents in the next two years. I can’t see that happening now unless Arum goes with Cintron for Manny like he did with Joshua Clottey, Antonio Margarito, Shane Mosley and Miguel Cotto. All those guys had been recently beaten when Arum matched Pacquiao up with them. It’s going to be harder in this case because Cintron didn’t just lose this fight, he’s lost his fight before that against Paul Williams. How would it look like if Arum put Pacquiao in with a guy on a two fight losing streak? I guess fans would probably buy tickets anyway but it wouldn’t make Pacquiao look all that good beating up on a guy that’s losing all the time.