Weights: Guerrero-Kamegai, Lomachenko-Russell Jr

By Boxing News - 06/20/2014 - Comments

guerrero3333By Dan Ambrose: Welterweight contender Robert Guerrero (31-2-1, 18 KO’s) weighed in today at 146 pounds for his fight against Yoshihiro Kamegai (24-1-1, 21 KO’s) for their fight on Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. Kamegai weighed in at 146.7lbs, and looked considerably taller than the 5’8” Guerrero, who has always been the taller fighter in his bouts.

It was strange to see Guerrero staring up at Kamegai. It’ll be interesting to see how well Guerrero deals with being the smaller man on Saturday night.

In the co-feature, Ukrainian Vasyl Lomachenko (1-1, 1 KO’s) weighed in at 125.5lbs for his fight against #1 WBO Gary Russell Jr (24-0, 14 KO’s) for their fight for the vacant WBO featherweight title. Lomachenko has a big height advantage over Russell Jr. of 2.5 inches. Whether Lomachenko is able to use his size advantage to his benefit on Saturday will depend on if he throws enough punches, and keeps from holding all night.

In his disappointing performance in his last fight against Orlando Salido last March, Lomachenko held frequently in every round and he looked like he couldn’t handle the body shots that Salido was hitting him. Not surprisingly, Lomachenko ended up losing the fight by a 12 round decision.

What was surprising was that World Boxing Organization letting Lomachenko get a second shot at the title. You’ve got to figure that if Lomachenko loses this time, he’ll have to wait a while before the WBO lets him fight again for the title, at least until he’s picked up a few wins under his belt. With a record of 1-1, it’s not something you see every day with a fighter getting back to back titles shots.

Lomachenko will need to figure out how to handle Russell Jr’s hand speed advantage in this fight, because he’s quite a bit slower than him. While Lomachenko previously won two Olympic gold medals, his opposition wasn’t in the class that Russell Jr was or as well in the same class as Salido. We might just find that what Lomachenko did in the amateur ranks has no bearing to what he’s capable of doing in the pro ranks, because they’re so much better.

Devon Alexander weighed in at 148.25, and his opponent Jesus Soto Karass weighed 148. Alexander had excuses about his recent loss to Shawn Porter, saying that he overlooked him and such. Well, if he loses to Soto karass on Saturday night, he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that he does poorly against pressure fighters who hit hard and don’t give him any room to fight on the outside. You can bet that Alexander will be looking to grab a lot in this fight, because it’s probably thing he can do that will keep Soto Karass off of him. The grabbing didn’t work for Alexander against Porter, because he was so strong that he just throwing punches while being held. It a pretty brutal beating that Alexander took in that fight.



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