By Scott Gilfoid: WBA World lightweight champion Anthony Crolla (30-4-3, 12 KOs) has two difficult possible opponents for his next fight in February or March at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK. Crolla, 29, could be facing his mandatory challenger interim WBA champion Ismael Barroso (19-0-2, 18 KOs) or WBC lightweight champion Jorge Linares (40-3, 27 KOs) in a unification fight.

The unification fight against Linares will be the one they will reportedly attempt to make first. While they’re not coming out directly and saying it, they appear to see the 30-year-old Linares as the easier of the two difficult options.

Linares has been beaten before by Sergio Thompson, Antonio DeMarco and Juan Carlos Salgado. Linares also struggled at times to defeat Kevin Mitchell last May in Linares’ 10th round TKO victory at the O2 Arena in London, UK.

Barroso made easy work of Mitchell in knocking him down three times en route to stopping him in the 5th round.

Crolla recently captured the WBA World lightweight title with a 5th round knockout win over Darleys Perez in their rematch last November at the Manchester Arena. Crolla stopped Perez with a left to the body that had him down on the canvas in pain. It was surprising to see Crolla get knockout over a decent fighter like Perez, because Crolla has not shown knockout power in his past fights. But it was a case of Crolla landing a perfectly placed shot to an area of Perez’s body that he couldn’t handle.

“Crolla will be out before April so it could be March or even as soon as February,” said Crolla’s trainer Joe Gallagher said via the manchestereveningnews.co.uk. “Barroso is the mandatory challenger and that’s who we will look to fight. It had to happen within 120 days but it could happen sooner than that. We’re not going to run from the fight as it’s one I think we can win as I saw a lot of flaws from Barroso against Kevin Mitchell.”

Facing Linares is going to be a very, very tough fight for Crolla, and I’d be surprised if he doesn’t get knocked out by him. Linares is a much better technically gifted fighter than Darleys Perez, and he’s got better punching power. They could stage a fight between Crolla and Linares in Crolla’s backyard, and I still don’t see him winning.

Linares makes very little mistakes and doesn’t fight stupid like we saw from Perez in his two fights with Crolla. Further, Linares does not mind fighting in front of hostile crowds. Linares showed that in his fight against Kevin Mitchell in dominating him the entire fight despite the pro-Mitchell crowd.

Perez seemed bothered by all the cheering for Crolla in their two fights, and he didn’t appear to be mentally ready to handle that kind of atmosphere.

As far as Gallagher saying he saw flaws in Barroso from his fight against Mitchell, I have no idea what Gallagher is talking about. Barroso was a wrecking machine in that fight in taking Mitchell apart slowly in every round. I rate Mitchell as a better fighter than Crolla, and Barroso had no problems defeating Mitchell.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYXy6_A7z1E

“It was not the Mitchell that we have seen in the past but I think people are getting carried away by saying that Barroso is this monster puncher,” Gallagher said.

I think Mitchell would kindly disagree with Gallagher about Barroso not being a monster puncher. It was clear from the first minute of the first round that Barroso is a big puncher. But what makes Barroso even more dangerous is he just does not stop throwing punches. He’s attacking constantly and forcing his opponents to defend against very hard punches with nonstop shots.

You either have to fight to survive or run like a cheetah to get away from him. Since Crolla is not exactly fleet of foot, I think he’s going to need to actually fight Barroso if he doesn’t want to get blasted into eternity immediately.

Crolla likes to fight at a slow pace so that he can use his feints to throw his opponents off by keeping them guessing when he’s going to throw shots. But against a fighter that just relentlessly attacks like Barroso, Crolla won’t be able to use his feints because he’s going to be all over him throwing punches.

Barroso won’t be sitting on the outside wondering ‘will he throw a punch or won’t he?’ Barroso will ignore Crolla’s constant feints and light him up with shot after shot. Heck, the only way I can see Crolla surviving against Barroso is if he runs for 12 full rounds to lose a lopsided decision, unless we get the odd scoring like in the first fight between Crolla and Perez.

If I were Gallagher and Crolla, I would spend the entire training camp working on running and holding; because there’s no way that I can see Crolla being able to keep Barroso off of him. The feinting garbage won’t work, and neither will Crolla’s head movement. Barroso doesn’t care if he misses with his shots; he just keeps throwing punches nonstop.

Also, you won’t see Barroso pulling a stupid move like Perez did by letting the feather-fisted Crolla back him up against the ropes so that he could land body shots. Barroso doesn’t back up, believe me. Barroso is always coming forward no matter what, and there is no way on eather that a feather-duster puncher like Crolla will succeed in backing Barroso up. That’s not happening in this lifetime.