By Chris Williams: Lightweight contender Jorge Linares (31-3, 20 KO’s) says he’s now looking for a new trainer after getting beaten for the second straight time last Saturday in a 2nd round TKO defeat to Sergio Thompson (22-2, 20 KO’s) at the Oasis Hotel Complex, in Cancun, Mexico.

Linares, #2 WBA, #2 WBC, told fightnews.com “I will continue in boxing but we must make some changes and among those changes may be a new trainer.”

Linares’ trainer right now is Freddie Roach, the same trainer that Manny Pacquiao, Vanes Martiriosyan and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. is trained by among many others.

Oscar De La Hoya, Linares’ promoter with Golden Boy Promotions, mentioned yesterday on his twitter that Linares needs to get a new trainer that can teach him some defense because De La Hoya feels that this is a glaring weakness in Linares’ came. He’s clearly right. Linares way too easy to hit and it takes away from his amazing offensive skills.

De La Hoya feels that a good defensive trainer will keep Linares from getting hit quite so much and it can help him protect his weak chin. Linares’ chin obviously isn’t that strong but he can take a respectable shot. Linare’s problem is his defense is so poor that he’s taking way too many of those big shots. If he could limit the amount of shots he gets hit with by say 50%, he’d have a good chance of beating guys like Thompson and Antonio DeMarco, who defeated Linares by an 11th round TKO last October.

While there’s no shame in losing to a fighter with the kind of power and ability that Thompson possesses, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Linares came into the fight with the far superior skills, and yet he was getting hammered immediately by Thompson and was eventually dropped in the second round. The fight was stopped immediately because of a cut that Linares suffered over his left eye. You can make an argument that Linares may have been able to come back and beat Thompson had the fight been allowed to continue. However, the way that Linares was taking tremendous punishment from Thompson in the 2nd round, it might have taken a miracle for that to happen.