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By Chris Williams: No.2 lightweight contender Jorge Linares (31-2, 20 Ko’s) will once again try and restart his career after another knockout loss when gets back in the ring next month against little known super featherweight Sergio Thompson (21-2, 19 KO’s) on March 31st in Cancun, Mexico.

Linares, 26, was stopped in the 11th round in his last fight against Antonio DeMarco in an attempt to capture the vacant World Boxing Council lightweight title last October. Linares led the entire way and had a huge lead going into the 11th round. However, due to cuts around his eyes and on the bridge of his nose causing a lot of bleeding into his eyes, Linares was eventually chopped down by a relentless DeMarco, who wasn’t going to stop until he had won the fight.

Linares likely would have been knocked out even if he hadn’t been cut because he was tired and DeMarco was still surprisingly fresh as if he had just started the fight. That’s never good sign when you have a fighter that still is fighting at a high rate late in the fight like DeMarco did. Linares was in the position where he needed to run in order to ride out the win, but that’s not part of his game, so he ended up getting stopped in a brutal fashion.

I’m not sure I approve of matching Linares against a super featherweight in order for him to get a confidence building win. For one, this isn’t a good fighter and that’s going to get in the way of Linares getting much from this fight. And two, Thompson’s a super featherweight and that’s not the kind of guys that Linares will be fighting once he starts getting matched tough again. Linares needs work on his defense and I’m not sure if his trainer Freddie Roach is the guy to do that. Linares needs a coach specializes in defense and he might want to lose Roach and look for another trainer that can teach him to move his legs so he doesn’t take so many head shots.