By Eric Thomas: Former IBF welterweight champion Kermit Cintron (34-5-2, 28 KO’s) will be trying to keep his sagging career afloat on March 15th in facing the hard-hitting Ronald Cruz (20-2, 15 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Sands Casino Resort, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA. The Cintron-Cruz fight will take place on the card headlined by heavyweight contender Tomasz Adamek in his fight against Vyacheslav Glazkov.
This is going to be a really tough fight for Cintron and it’ll be surprising if he wins it. Cruz isn’t a great fighter, but he can punch a little and that might be enough for him to get past Cintron. Cruz is pretty limited, as we saw in his back to back defeats to Ray Narh and Antwone Smith. But when he’s facing guys that have a weak chin or who don’t throw a lot of punches, Cruz does really well. Cintron’s chin is a major weak spot for him, and he stopped throwing combinations years ago.
The 34-year-old Cintron’s career has really plummeted since losing his IBF 147 lb. title to Antonio Margarito in a 6th round stoppage in April of 2008. Cintron was able to get things together briefly after that loss in winning 3 of his next 4 fights with one of the fights being a draw against Sergio Martinez.
During that time, Cintron out-boxed Alfredo Angulo in beating him by a 12 round unanimous decision. However, Cintron dodged a bullet in his draw with Sergio Martinez because he was able to convince the referee that a knockdown was caused by a head-butt rather than a left hand from Martinez.
Cintron stayed down from the left to the head for a long time, and the referee ruled it a head-butt which saved Cintron from being knocked out. In 2010, Cintron’s career took a turn for the worse when he fell out of the ring in the 4th round his fight with Paul Williams, causing the fight to be halted. A lot of boxing fans felt that Cintron purposely dove out of the ring to avoid what would have likely been a hard fight for him. Cintron then lost his next fight to Carlos Molina by a 10 round unanimous decision in July 2011.
By that time, Cintron’s confidence seemed lost. He was nothing like the fighter he’d been before his defeats at the hands of Margarito, and it was difficult to figure out what happened to him. He still had the power, but he was no longer throwing combinations like he had before. In November of 2011, Cintron was stopped by Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in the 5th round. It was a really poor performance for Cintron, because he didn’t stand his ground against Canelo and ran until he was halted.
In hindsight, Cintron should have at least gone down swinging by meeting Canelo with his best power shots to try halt the young fighter. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any lower for Cintron he then was held to a 10 round draw by a very average fighter in Adrian Granados last year in March. This was a fight that Cintron could have won easily if he had stood his ground and thrown combinations for the entire fight, but instead he would throw one shot and immediately hold.
Comments are closed.