By Jason Kim: 26-year-old lightweight contender Jorge Linares (31-2, 20 KO’s) will be back in the ring for the first time since being stopped in the 11th round last October by Antonio Demarco in a fight for the vacant WBC lightweight title. Linares will be facing Sergio Thompson (21-2, 19 KO’s) in a WBC lightweight title eliminator at the Oasis Hotel Complex in Cancun, Mexico.

If Linares can get past this fight in one piece with a victory, then Linares will be facing DeMarco in a rematch on July 7th at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

Linares took a lot of punishment in that fight against DeMarco and sustained a couple of really nasty cuts that obscured his ability to see resulting in DeMarco taking complete control over the fight in the 2nd half of the bout until hurting Linares and stopping him in the 11th from a series of hard looping shots to the head.

Linares, #2 WBA, #2 WBC, has a tough fight on his hands with Thompson. This guy might not be all that fast nor quite as tall as him, but he’s got some power and he keeps coming forward all night long. Like a lot of fighters, most of Thompson’s fights have come against mediocre 2nd tier opposition. However, Thompson stepped it up against WBC International lightweight champion Alisher Rahimov in September 2010, losing by a 12 round split decision in an action packed fight.

If Thompson fights like that this Saturday night, Linares could have some major problems on his hands because he took way too much punishment in his last fight and you don’t want to see him getting hit a lot back to back like that. Linares needs to get out of this fight relatively whole so that he can be in good enough shape to where he might have a better chance against DeMarco in their rematch in July. I don’t expect Linares to win that fight because his stamina is poor and he can’t take shots all that well without getting hurt. Linares can really dish it out and then some, but he can’t take it for anything. He has a great trainer in Freddie Roach, but he’s limited what he can when Linares fades like he did last time out.