by Dan Ambrose: The May 5th Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Miguel Cotto undercard will be a rather poor one aside from the mismatch between WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez facing 40-year-old Shane Mosley. According to Dan Rafael, Mayweather has added two of his fighters from his Mayweather Promotions stable – Jesse Vargas and Deandre Latimore in separate TELEVISED bouts on the undercard.
Unbeaten light welterweight fringe contender Jesse Vargas (18-0, 9 KO’s) will be facing 31-year-old two time title challenger junior middleweight Alfonso Gomez (23-5-2, 12 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout, presumably in welterweight action. It’s hard to see Gomez coming down all the way from 154 to fight at 140, but I can see it happening due to Vargas being the name here and being backed by Mayweather.
It’s a competitive I guess. Vargas, #13 IBF) didn’t look at all impressive in his fight with Joseito Lopez last September in a 10 round split decision win. However, he did look fairly good in beating the tough Lanardo Tyner by a 10 round unanimous decision in his last fight in February. Vargas has good power, but he’s not a huge puncher by stretch of the imagination and he’s very easy to hit. I can’t see this guy ever being a champion, but you never know. I didn’t see Danny Garcia ever picking up a belt but things opened up when Devon Alexander moved up in weight to the welterweight division.
Gomez has done zilch since losing a 6th round TKO to WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez last September in a PPV card. If Gomez isn’t weight drained, he should have enough to beat the young 22-year-old Vargas. Gomez has beaten some decent opponents like Jose Luis Castillo, Raul Munoz, Jesus Soto-Karass and Juan Manuel Buendia. He also defeated Arturo Gatti in Gatti’s last fight of his career.
I still don’t see this a very good fight because Vargas really doesn’t impress me, and I just see Gomez as an opponent.
In the other new fight that was added to the card, junior middleweight contender Deandre Latimore (23-3, 17 KO’s) will be facing former World Boxing Organization (WBO) welterweight champion Carlos Quintana (28-3, 22 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout. Latimore, #9 WBO, #11 IBF, should win this fight no problem as long as he can find some power. It’s hard understand Latimore. Sometimes he can really good, like when he beat Sechew Powell, but in a lot of his other fights, he’s just looked awful, like a fringe contender going nowhere. He was beaten by Cory Spinks and Powell in a rematch. Latimore has won three fights in a row against Darien Ford, Dennis Sharpe and Milton Nunez. Latimore looked especially mediocre in the Nunez fight, and I pretty much have given up him ever doing anything in the division other than as in a gate-keeper capacity.
Quintana’s career has really gone south since he was stopped in the 1st round in his rematch with Paul Williams in June 2008. Quintana won two fights after the Williams defeat, beating Joshua Onyango and Jesse Feliciano, but then he was easily destroyed by Andre Berto by a 3rd round TKO in April 2010. Quintana didn’t help his career by taking 10 months off after the loss to Berto. He came back last February and defeated Yoryi Estrella by a 9th round TKO. However, Quintana hasn’t fought since then and by the time he steps into the ring in May, he will have been out of action for 15 months. It just seems like he’s not taking his career serious any longer.
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